Acid attack survivor gets job at CM’s office
Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah on Friday directed officials to offer a job in his office to an acid attack survivor.
Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah on Friday directed officials to offer a job in his secretariat to an acid attack survivor, said a communication from the CM’s office.
According to the chief minister’s office, the survivor, an M.Com graduate, was allegedly attacked on April 28, 2022. She with her parents appealed for a job to the chief minister during ‘Janata Darshan’. On hearing her plight, the chief minister while hearing public grievances at his residence, promised employment on the spot, according to CMO.
They had also appealed to the then chief minister Basavaraj Bommai for employment. He only promised, but did not give a job to the survivor, the CMO statement said, quoting the survivor and her parents. Hearing the plea of the survivor, the CM directed the officials to give her a job on a contract basis in his secretariat.
“I am feeling better now, but I have to undergo multiple surgeries. So, in order to get financial assistance, we had approached the government for a job. Today (Friday) when we went to meet Siddaramaiah he said a job will be given at the CM’s office. He asked me to come office on Saturday itself if I wanted,” said the acid attack survivor.
She however said the previous government helped her as well. “Bommai government had increased the pension given to acid attack survivors from ₹3,000 to ₹10,000 and they have given us ₹10 lakh for treatment as well,” she added.
Police have submitted a charge sheet in connection with the April 28 acid attack on a 23-year-old woman in Bengaluru and said the attack was pre-planned. In the 770-page charge sheet submitted to the 13th additional chief metropolitan magistrate (ACMM) court, police have named 92 witnesses, including statements of two eyewitnesses taken under section 164 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Accused Nagesh Babu, who was waiting in an auto near the workplace of the woman in Bengaluru’s Sunkadakatte, had chased and poured acid on her, the charge sheet said.
Police have also submitted CCTV footage where Nagesh is seen a day before carrying out the acid attack near the survivor’s office. Karnataka police had formed 10 special teams to nab the accused and after 16 days of the crime, he was arrested from Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu.
Senior police officers, who investigated the case, said the man arrested for the acid attack had planned a similar attack in 2020 and procured nine litres of sulphuric acid.
According to police, the marriage of the survivor’s sister was the trigger for Nagesh to plan the attack. When he came to know that her sister was engaged, he feared that the girl would also get married soon. He got restless and approached relatives of the girl with a marriage proposal. They refused. Since then, he began planning this attack.
“He had been stalking the woman for more than seven years. During this period, he had approached her multiple times with a marriage proposal. In 2020, when she refused him firmly, he had procured acid to attack her. Some of his friends, who came to know about the plan, convinced him to go ahead with the plan,” said one of the investigators.
Because he had procured acid in 2020, when he decided to take revenge on her in the second half of April, he knew where and how to procure the sulphuric acid. Nagesh used the letterhead of a private company in Bengaluru, which provides housekeeping services, to get the acid. He wrote an email to a supplier claiming that he needed two half-litre bottles of acid for the sample and a large order of eight litres.
He procured acid by April 20, however, didn’t attack her immediately. He approached her once again on April 27. He asked her to marry him and this time, the girl firmly refused his proposal. That day even the manager of the company, where the girl was working, warned him to stay away. When the girl informed her parents about his visit, they approached the attacker’s elder brother.
Following this, on April 28, he went to the survivor’s workplace and attacked her with sample bottles he had procured. “Hours before attacking her, he had sold all the material available in his garment factory and took cash payments. We believe that he had been planning this attack for a long time. A few years ago, he had sold some land in his hometown and started a garment factory in Bengaluru. In the past few months, he sold most of the equipment in the factory,” said the senior officer.
Soon after attacking the woman, he went to his elder brother and told him what had happened. The elder brother and another friend told Nagesh to surrender before police, but he told them that he would surrender only before the court.
With this intention, he went to a sessions court and magistrate court in the city. When the lawyers told him that there was no option available for him to surrender before the court as the FIR has not reached the court, he fled Bengaluru.
On May 12, two officers from Bengaluru went to the Tiruvannamalai temple where he was staying and stuck a poster with his details. The next day, a person called an inspector in the city and said someone who matches the description was at the temple that resulted in his arrest.