Forced Ingestion under Ambit: Acid Attack Jurisprudence Amplified

Statutes in our country are, as pointed out by many scholars and experts, quite well researched and up to the mark.1 The story of expert consultations and Parliamentary scrutiny has remained quite the same throughout the years. However, sometimes grave errors do creep in. Rather, as laws get enhanced, so do the methodology of crime and mens rea. One such error has been duly pointed out by the Supreme Court contemporarily in the case of Shaheen Malik v Union of India (2026).2 Acid attack remains one of the most brutal forms of gender-based violence not only in our country, but in the whole world. It is not limited to a standard localised assault, but has emerged as a deliberate mechanism of gendered terror meant to cause permanent socio-legal erasure. Although traditional legal frameworks have viewed acid attacks through the prism of external facial or bodily disfigurement, commonly referred to as vitriolage3 in early criminal textbooks, the approach fell short of the evolving nature of actus reus in the modern scenario, hence creating a statutory vacuum for cases where the corrosive chemical is introduced internally via forced ingestion or intravenous substances. This expansion of acid attack to encompass forceful ingestion marks a necessary doctrinal shift from evaluating external visual deformity to defending absolute internal bodily integrity under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. By revolving around this conceptual pivot, this article demonstrates how statutory language must adapt to the needs of society and time, be it factored externally or internally.