IN Pakistan fatherless daughters walk with a target pinned to their backs. No male guardian leaves them unprotected from the eyes of the men who surround them. In a recent heart-breaking case of the cruelty of this truth, a nine-year-old girl named Ishmal was shot dead.
Ishmal lived in upper Swat. She was the youngest of six children who were all left orphans when their father passed away. According to family accounts and police reports, Ishmal went to school as usual on Sept 9, 2026. When she came home, she changed out of her school uniform and went to a neighbour’s house (she reportedly often did this). According to media reports citing the police complaint, not long after she had left her home, her sister heard screams and then gunshots. When the sister rushed to the neighbour’s house, she saw Ishmal lying on the floor covered in blood. The man who would turn out to be the accused in this case was seen going into a room.
Family members and neighbours rushed to help, and Ishmal was taken to the hospital. Ishmal died on the way to the hospital or shortly after getting there. The investigation revealed that she had been allegedly sexually assaulted, shot twice and left to die. Such was the alarming cruelty perpetrated on her. She was simply a child, a fatherless girl, who was adjudged to be worthless except to fulfil the lust and will of a man.
The suspect, a man identified as Sultan, has been arrested. The suspect had a government job as a watchman. He is the father of six children, some of whom were Ishmal’s friends and the reason why she would go to his house in the afternoons after school. His wife was also taken into custody — possibly because she was present during the assault and murder. The accused has been booked on murder charges under the Pakistan Penal Code.
Once media attention ends, no one pursues cases of assault and murder.
On Sept 11, 2026, a huge protest was held in Madyan in Swat, where women came out to protest against the murder and what they saw as the unlikelihood of the culprit (who is reportedly seen by the locals as having government contacts) being brought to justice.
The answer to that question is unlikely to be known soon. Swat has been the site of some alarming violence against minor girls of late. On June 24, 2026, a 17-year-old girl Ayesha was found missing from her home in Abbottabad. According to the FIR, the girl had been abducted by two men who took her to a hotel, where she was sexually assaulted. She was allegedly given a poisonous or intoxicating substance afterwards. She was left abandoned at Saidu Sharif Teaching Hospital in critical condition and died during treatment.
In that case, too, there were arrests, including of a man named Muzammil who was identified as the chief suspect in an FIR registered in Mingora. Cases for murder, rape, kidnapping and administering a poisonous substance have all been registered against him. There was initial outrage, but as soon as it died down, it was unclear what became of the prosecution and how many more suspects had been arrested.
Cases are registered; suspects are caught and even charged and put in prison. The court process begins, but after that it becomes increasingly unclear as to what happens to the men who commit these crimes with such impunity. While it seems that the government and law enforcement in Pakistan believe they should give the impression that ‘something is being done’, once the media attention dissipates, no one bothers to find out whether those who are caught, charged and jailed are ever real-ly punished.
So, in the wake of the ever-growing numbers of dead Pakistani girls, one can only make a plea to the government to demand that all provinces and all police stations start providing end-of-year reports on the status of various convictions for the murder and sexual assaults of girls within their jurisdiction.
While the numbers of actual cases will always be low because the vast majority of them are never reported, at least there would be some accountability for what happens to the accused in the year or two years following.
Once the relevant institutions start to take some responsibility and are made to feel accountable for any lack of action, and when the conviction of femicidal maniacs who abduct and sexually assault women becomes a priority, a cultural change might ensue, in which women and girls are not seen as worthless and expendable — lesser citizens who can be raped and murdered at the whim of a man.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2026
