Years After Acid Horror, Suicide Stirs Pakistan

Deep-rooted social prejudice and misogyny were part of her story. Born to a heroin-addicted mother on Napier Road, Karachi’s red-light district, by puberty Ms. Younas was a working “dancing girl” — a euphemism for prostitute. She had a son when she was a teenager. Then, in 1997, at 18, she achieved the vice girl’s version of the Pakistani dream: she married a client, Bilal Khar, who came from the other side of the tracks.       

But the marriage collapsed after three years, amid allegations of domestic violence, and Ms. Younas fled to her mother’s home on Napier Road. She was sleeping there in May 2000 when two men burst into the apartment; one cast a bottle of liquid over her face and chest. Ms. Younas struggled and screamed, but it was too late: the acid fused her lips, melted her breasts and destroyed one eye. During a three-month stay in a hospital, she came close to death.        “She had two little holes for her nostrils, and her mouth was so melted that only a straw could fit in,” said Tehmina Durrani, a prominent Lahore figure who championed the case. Ms. Durrani had her own reasons for tackling the Khars — she had divorced Bilal’s father, Mustafa, and had written a searing memoir of the marriage titled “My Feudal Lord

Other Pakistanis, however, showed little interest in the case. Newspapers, even liberal ones, gave the story scant coverage. Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s government dragged its heels over issuing a passport to Ms. Younas, concerned that the case would hurt Pakistan’s image.       

Mr. Khar went on the run, and was declared a fugitive in early 2002. But when the trial started a year later, after Mr. Khar had been caught and arrested, the case quickly crumbled. Although four witnesses testified to seeing him enter Ms. Younas’s home the night of the attack, all later retracted their statements. Earlier, they had complained of intimidation by Mr. Khar, but the judge paid little notice, and in December 2003 he dismissed the case.       
In one recent television interview, Mr. Khar described himself as the victim of a “media trial.” He pleaded for privacy to protect his three daughters, who, he said, were facing awkward questions over the case at school.       
“You should be considerate about that,” he chided the host.       
Ms. Younas was not present for the acquittal in 2003; she had left for Rome with her son, Noman. There, over a decade, she slowly rebuilt her life. The Italian government granted her political asylum; the city authorities offered her an apartment; and a Milan cosmetics company paid for her surgery.