NEW DELHI - When Sonali Mukherjee spurned the advances of three of her fellow students, they responded by melting her face with acid.

But rather than hide herself away, the 27-year-old applied to appear on India’s most-watched TV quiz show – and walked away a millionaire.

“If you can stare at a picture of a pretty woman then you can look at my burnt face too,” Mukherjee tells AFP in her tiny home in the capital New Delhi.

“It’s very easy for victims of acid attacks to swallow poison but I made the choice to stand up and scream and shout against the violence.”

The recent gang-rape of a university student on a bus in New Delhi – which sparked angry protests across India – has again shone an uncomfortable spotlight on the levels of violence against women in the country, where sex assaults are often dismissed as mere “eve-teasing”.

National crime records show that 228,650 of the total 256,329 violent crimes recorded last year were against women.

Nine years ago, Mukherjee was a promising student at a college in the eastern city of Dhanbad when the three students broke into her home while she was sleeping and hurled acid on her face for rejecting them.

Read the full story here.