In a horrifying act of personal revenge, a man in Goa recently threw acid on a 17-year-old boy, reportedly holding him responsible for the death of his daughter. According to police, the accused, Nilesh, believed the teenager was in a relationship with his daughter and blamed him for her “unnatural” death, which occurred a month earlier.
Instead of waiting for the investigation by Sindhudurg Police to run its course, Nilesh allegedly planned the attack, procured a corrosive chemical from his workplace, and carried out a calculated assault on the unsuspecting boy as he waited at a bus stop.
This incident is shocking not only for its brutality but also for what it says about our growing tendency to substitute the rule of law with the rule of emotion.
Grief can be blinding, and delayed justice can be frustrating but none of these justify taking the law into one’s own hands.
In trying to avenge one tragic loss, Nilesh has now created another. One teenager is dead. Another is permanently scarred – both physically and emotionally. And two families now live under the weight of irreversible trauma.
The words of Mahatma Gandhi – “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind” – have never felt more relevant. Revenge masquerading as justice only multiplies the pain and chaos. What was achieved through this acid attack? Did it bring back the daughter? Did it answer the unresolved questions about her death? No. Instead, it has derailed a second young life, created a criminal out of a grieving father, and pulled two families into deeper suffering.
The idea of justice must be rooted in fairness, not in retaliation.
When we allow individual anger to override institutional processes, we signal the breakdown of civil society. Legal systems, however slow or flawed, are built precisely to prevent such emotionally driven acts of violence.
If every citizen decides to act on their personal pain and grief by punishing those they believe are responsible, we invite chaos – a society where guilt is decided by emotion, and punishment is delivered by rage.
Moreover, this incident highlights a larger failure: our inability to restrict access to hazardous chemicals. Despite multiple court rulings and legislation regulating the sale of acid and corrosive substances, enforcement remains lax.
The accused in this case was able to access and weaponize such a chemical from his own workplace – an industrial area in Mapusa. This loophole is not just a regulatory failure; it’s a public safety hazard.
When dangerous substances are so easily available, we risk enabling such acts of violence over and over again.
Beyond law enforcement and regulatory reform, there is a pressing need for emotional education and mental health support.
While grief can never excuse violence, the system must find ways to help people process personal loss in healthy, lawful ways. If the father in this case had access to counselling or legal aid to help navigate his daughter’s tragic death, perhaps this incident could have been prevented.
We must also confront the toxic masculinity and possessiveness that often underpins such violent responses to relationship issues involving young women. In many such cases, the narrative is steeped in the belief that a daughter’s relationships are a matter of family “honour” and any perceived harm must be met with punishment. These dangerous ideas not only rob young women of agency but also fuel cycles of violence and retribution.
As citizens, we must resist the temptation to glorify or empathize with vigilante justice, no matter how emotional the backstory is. Sympathy for grief must never translate into tolerance for violence.
Real justice lies not in inflicting more harm but in ensuring that the truth is uncovered and the guilty – if any – are held accountable through due process.
Ultimately, if we continue down this path of personal revenge, we risk becoming a society where violence is justified by emotion, and justice is reduced to vendetta. And in that world, no one is safe — not our children, not our families, and certainly not our future.
Let us remember: justice heals. Revenge only scars.
