Spurned Suitors Respond With Disfiguring Acid : Pakistan: Activists say there have been hundreds of such attacks over the last few years in a nation where women are often assaulted by men who are seldom punished.

MULTAN, Pakistan —  Farzana Bhatti’s story is not unusual: A spurned suitor, outraged that she was to marry someone else, sneaked into her family compound at night and splashed acid on her face as she slept.

It left her blind and badly disfigured.

“I felt as if somebody threw fire on me,” Bhatti said, gingerly lifting her veil to reveal the mass of scar tissue that is now her face. A photograph taken before the attack shows a striking young woman with flawless skin and dark brown eyes.

Human rights activists say there have been hundreds of acid attacks on young women over the last few years in Pakistan, where women are frequently assaulted by men who are seldom punished.

Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and a few women activists have spoken out in general terms about the abuse of women, but their efforts have little impact in a conservative Muslim country where women have few rights.

The acid attacks have a pattern: A young man pursues an attractive young woman and often makes a marriage proposal to her or her family. When he is rejected, he stalks the woman, waiting for an opportunity to throw acid in her face. The acid sears the skin and often blinds the victim.

“It’s common for the attacker to say something like, ‘Let’s see who will marry you now,’ ” said Dr. Abrar Khan, a plastic surgeon in Multan who has treated about 50 acid victims in three years.

When Bhatti visited another victim, Tahira Rasool, who is still bedridden, the women wept almost uncontrollably as they recounted their ordeals.

Bhatti, 21, was attacked on a hot summer night in 1992 as the family slept in their courtyard. Her engagement had been announced hours earlier, angering the rejected suitor.

She is a seamstress, from a poor family, and can no longer work. Her fiance disappeared. Her life is ruined, Bhatti said. “I sit, I sleep. I sit, I sleep. And I cry all day long.”

In only one respect is her case unusual: The assailant, Mohammed Salim, was convicted and received an unprecedented prison sentence of 27 years.

“The police didn’t even want to register a case initially,” said Fakhr-un-nisa Khokhar, an outspoken lawyer who served as special counsel to the prosecution.

“We do nothing to protect women in this country,” she said. “Crimes against women just aren’t taken seriously.”

Rasool was a top student at a women’s college in Multan when she was attacked in February, 1993, by a man who had been verbally harassing her and her friends for weeks. She lost the vision in one eye. The skin of her face, chest and left arm still is badly blistered.

Most Pakistani women get little education. Few understand the court system and they seldom press charges when attacked. Even if they do, convictions are rare and the harshest sentences are usually just a few years in prison.

Acid attack cases appear especially common in and around Multan, a dusty, chaotic city of 2 million in central Pakistan, 250 miles south of Islamabad.

“The attacks are premeditated and often happen during the day, when an acquaintance just walks up and throws the acid,” Khan said. “The damage is instant.”

His treatment involves multiple operations, including painful skin grafts, and the result is still less than satisfactory.

“We can make them presentable, but we can’t make them normal,” Khan said of the victims. “There are always psychological scars. Some want to commit suicide.”

Rasool wrote a poem, called “The Weaker Sex,” about the attack on her. In it, she invokes the name of the 7th-Century Muslim spiritual leader Hussain, urging him to seek justice for women:

O Hussain, my Imam,

Did you see the man

Who took away the face of your daughter?

Why don’t you ask all your followers

To beat their chests not only for you,

But for your daughters too.