THE horrific incident of a woman allegedly gang-raped in front of her husband and three-year-old daughter near Sukheki in Hafizabad district, Punjab, the other day is but one more reminder of our society’s failure to protect women from the savagery of the heartless brutes living amongst us. The event, which brings back gruesome memories of the Sialkot Motorway rape case from 2020, underlines how vulnerable women are outside their homes, and even in the presence of their families. Thousands of women and young girls are sexually abused and violated across the country every year but only a fraction of such occurrences are reported due to social stigma and lack of public faith in Pakistan’s criminal justice system when it comes to prosecuting the rapist. The odds have always been against the rape victims — from victim-bashing to faulty investigation and evidence collection to weak prosecution — from the very start. It is extremely rare that a perpetrator gets caught and punished for his abhorrent action. Some cases do capture the attention of the media and the people, sparking public outrage for a few days or weeks. However, not much has changed in the way that we, as a society, look at or treat such incidents.

That the Hafizabad and Nankana Sahib police were more interested in washing their hands of the case than helping the hapless victim shows how insensitive our law-enforcement agencies have grown to such harrowing crimes against women. The Motorway case had indeed resulted in some welcome legal reforms, including the adoption of a broader definition of rape, the introduction of harsher punishments for the perpetrators, and an end to the degrading ‘two-finger’ test for rape victims. Additionally, changes in the laws called for the creation of anti-rape crisis cells and special courts for speedy trials in such cases, and the establishment of a countrywide registry of sex offenders. Yet these reforms mostly remain unimplemented; no effort has been made to even sensitise the police to the gravity of crime involving rape and sexual assaults, let alone train them to properly investigate such cases and handle evidence, or to improve prosecution so that the perpetrators of such heinous crimes do not go unpunished. The battle to eradicate crimes against women is a long one, and it cannot be won unless we start fighting it with determination.

Published in Dawn, July 27th, 2024