By: Anum Ehsan
Pakistan has developed a grim and familiar ritual. A woman is assaulted or killed, her story dominates television screens, hashtags demanding justice flood social media, and officials promise swift action. Then public attention moves on. Investigations lose momentum, trials drag on, institutional questions fade from the public conversation—and another woman’s suffering begins the cycle all over again.
A recent case in Lahore exposed this failure in particularly disturbing terms. A 20-year-old woman with learning disabilities alleged that an assistant sub-inspector raped her inside Ghaziabad Police Station. The accused was arrested, while all 78 personnel posted at the station were suspended for allegedly failing to prevent or report the incident. The investigation is ongoing.
The case raises a deeply troubling question: where can a woman turn for protection when the very institution responsible for protecting her is itself accused of abuse?
The numbers show that such incidents are far from isolated. The Sustainable Social Development Organization’s Mapping Gender-Based Violence in Pakistan 2024 recorded 32,617 reported cases of gender-based violence across the country. These included 5,339 reported rape cases, 547 so-called honour killings, 2,238 cases of domestic violence, and 24,439 cases of kidnapping or abduction.
The same report found conviction rates of just 0.5 per cent for rape and honour-killing cases, 0.1 per cent for kidnapping or abduction, and 1.3 per cent for domestic violence. The data was obtained from police and prosecution departments through right-to-information laws.
Even these alarming figures, however, represent only cases that entered the official system. Many incidents never reach the police. Fear, financial dependence, family pressure, social stigma and a lack of trust in law-enforcement institutions often force survivors into silence.
Pakistan is not short of laws. Rape, murder and so-called honour crimes are criminal offences, while legal protections against domestic violence exist across the provinces and in Islamabad. But legislation alone cannot protect women if police officers delay or refuse to register complaints, evidence is poorly collected, prosecutors are inadequately prepared, survivors lack legal assistance, or cases remain unresolved for years.
This gap between law and enforcement creates an environment in which impunity can flourish. It also helps explain why public outrage so rarely translates into lasting change. Society tends to focus on the brutality of an individual crime while paying far less attention to the institutional failures that may have allowed it to occur—and those that follow once the headlines disappear.
The media, too, must examine its own role.
Coverage often reaches its peak when a case is particularly shocking, graphic or connected to a trending name. Far less attention is given to survivors in rural communities, low-income neighbourhoods and abusive households, or to what happens after an arrest. Justice-oriented journalism should not end when public interest declines. It should follow the case through investigation, prosecution, trial and final judgment.
There is also a need for greater transparency. Pakistan needs publicly accessible data that connects complaints, arrests, prosecutions and court judgments, allowing citizens and policymakers to see where cases are being lost or delayed. Police stations should have properly trained female officers, functional gender desks and clear accountability mechanisms for officials who refuse, delay or neglect complaints.
Survivors also need more than promises of justice. They need safe shelters, accessible legal aid, witness protection and reliable medico-legal services. Investigators and prosecutors should be evaluated not merely on the number of cases registered, but on the quality, progress and outcome of the cases they handle.
Most importantly, violence against women must stop being treated as a series of unfortunate and disconnected incidents. These crimes continue because the conditions that enable them remain largely intact.
Public outrage can start a conversation. Hashtags can amplify a demand for justice. Political statements can draw attention to a crisis. But none of these, by themselves, can break the cycle.
What is needed is sustained public scrutiny, institutional accountability, effective investigation and a justice system capable of delivering timely and certain consequences for perpetrators.
Until that happens, outrage will continue to make headlines—only to give way to amnesia, while another woman becomes the next victim of the same broken cycle.
