Acid attack victim chose not to report previous attacks

Tuesday's acid attack wasn't the first instance of violent crime Aarti Thakur has endured. The 22-year-old has been attacked twice earlier over the past two months.

Tuesday's acid attack wasn't the first instance of violent crime Aarti Thakur has endured. The 22-year-old has been attacked twice earlier over the past two months. In December last year, she was slashed in the face by an unidentified man while two weeks ago, Thakur was assaulted by unidentified men, said the railway police.

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Surprisingly, the victim chose not to lodge a police complaint in either of the two instances. “Thakur approached us in December along with the man she accused of attacking her with a blade. We insisted that she lodge a complaint, but the matter was resolved between the two parties and Thakur refused to file a case,” said Abdul Rauf Shaikh, senior police inspector with the Malwani police station.

Following the attack, the victim and her family shifted out of Malwani to Nallasopara.

In January, Thakur was assaulted with a blunt object. But this time, she did not even report the matter to the police. Railway police say that the assailants in the two instances have not even been identified. Police suspect that Nasir Shaikh alias Pintu, the man arrested for throwing acid at Thakur on Tuesday, might have hired someone else to do the job on the previous occasions. Police are trying to verify if Shaikh was involved in the previous two attacks.