Hello, welcome to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Jane

Wilkinson. We're going back to India in 2013 to a landmark court victory for thousands

of acid attack victims, and we'll meet the woman who helped make that change happen

following her own horrific ordeal, an attack which she describes to me in detail.

I am not going to keep quiet, I am going to fight for justice, because I am not a victim,

and I won't let anyone else become a victim either.

This is Lakshmi Argaval in 2005 on a busy street in Delhi, a man through a bottle of acid

into her face. Her crime, she'd refused his proposal of marriage, he was 32, and she

was 15 years old.

I felt as if I was dreaming, as if it wasn't real, as if someone was burning me alive. My

whole face was burning, my whole body, I was not able to open my eyes. It felt as if someone

had placed heavy stones on my head, I was ridding in pain, and everybody was staring at

me like it was a spectacle. I looked at myself, both my hands were stretched, and my skin

was melting away like a blasting bottle melts in fire, and I could smell a very upper

sea.

The acid had burnt on contact, eating through Lakshmi's flesh, scarring her skin and damaging

her eyes.

After reaching the hospital, I fainted. Twenty buckets of water were poured over me, and

I was washed. Later, when my parents came to the hospital, my father hugged me, and

his shirt burnt, because there was so much acid still left on my body. The doctor said,

I might not survive. I was in a critical condition. I could not have imagined that trauma.

That was so painful.

...