“Deepika Padukone, one of the highest-paid and best-known actresses in Bollywood, can afford to choose her roles carefully and with purpose. With her newest film — the first she has produced — she chose to make a statement about acid attacks in India.

“’Chhapaak,’ which was released on Jan. 10 in India and select cities around the world, is based on the life of Laxmi Agarwal, who was attacked in New Delhi in 2005 by a man whose advances she had spurned. Since then, Ms. Agarwal, 29, has become an activist; she has pushed the Supreme Court of India to regulate the sale of acid and Parliament to make it easier to prosecute acid attack perpetrators.

“Acid attacks are on the rise in many countries and affect women disproportionately, according to Acid Survivors Trust International. India alone recorded close to 300 attacks in 2016, but the true number was probably much higher.”
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Read article by Priya Arora from The New York Times.