Pakistani Teenage Actress Bushra Waiz Attacked with Acid While Sleeping

An 18-year-old Pakistani actress has been the victim of an acid attack because she refused a marriage proposal.

Bushra Waiz had acid thrown in her face as she slept in her family home in Nowshera in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.

Akhtar Waiz, the teenager's brother, said a man burst into their home in the middle of the night and threw acid at his sister.

Waiz, a Pashto-language singer and film and stage actress, suffered from burns to the right side of her face including her eye, her right arm and leg. Doctors were fighting to stop her losing sight in that eye.

According to Dawn.com, her family said her assailant was her former producer, Shaukat Khan. He had attacked her, they claimed, because she had refused his repeated offers of marriage and he had refused to pay her for work she had done for him.

Over 100 attacks every year

Waiz's mother said: "My daughter used to work as an actress and was hired by Shaukat Khan to act in his stage dramas and plays but he was not willing to pay her and this led to a number of verbal arguments following which she refused to continue her acting."

Ijaz Khan, chief officer at Pabbi police station, confirmed that a complaint had been filed against the producer.

Acid attacks are common in Pakistan. More than 100 people, mostly women, report attacks every year. Many more go unreported.

Acid Survivors Foundation, an Islamabad-based NGO, says 45% of acid attacks were the result of family disputes; 17% were over marriage refusals.

The issue of acid attacks in Pakistan was recently broached by British plastic surgeon Dr Mohammad Jawad in the award-winning documentary Saving Face, in which he met victims and through surgery tried to restore functionality to their faces.