An acid attack left four sisters in north India with burns in a particularly brutal example of what is a growing problem in South Asia, police said Wednesday.
.
The youngest sister, 19, was admitted to hospital with severe injuries after two men on a motorbike splashed them with acid on Tuesday evening in the Shamli district of Uttar Pradesh, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the capital.
.
The sisters, aged between 19 and 24, were returning home from a government school where three of them work as teachers. The fourth is a student.
.
"The victims were walking together when two men on a motorbike made lewd remarks and the man who was riding pillion splashed acid on all of them," Abdul Hammed, the senior police officer investigating the case, told AFP.
.
"The youngest sister suffered maximum burn injuries and she had to be rushed to a hospital in Delhi." Hameed said no arrests had been made and the motive behind the crime was unclear.
.
Attacks on women have topped the national agenda since December 2012 when a medical student was assaulted and raped by six men on a moving bus in Delhi. She died two weeks later of her injuries.
.
Public anger prompted parliament to toughen intercourse offence laws including doubling the minimum prison sentence for gang-rape to 20 years, but lawmakers voted against increasing the punishment for acid attackers.