Adv Arsalan Zafar
JUST days ago, a young woman in Quetta had acid thrown across her face for rejecting a marriage proposal.
In Jhang, another woman was gang-raped and dumped at a hospital like refuse. In Punjab, a husband murdered his wife because she refused him intimacy. These are not isolated horrors. They are three faces of the same epidemic violence against women in Pakistan, a crisis so pervasive and so poorly addressed that women are dying faster than the law can be rewritten to save them.
Pakistan has a legal architecture that, on paper, promises protection. The Acid and Burn Crime Act 2025 criminalizes acid and fire-related violence with strict penalties, including the death penalty if the attack results in death, up to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment for causing injury and makes all offences non-bailable and non-compoundable. It mandates 30-day investigations, 60-day fast-track trials, witness protection, free medical treatment and rehabilitation for survivors, a federal victim compensation fund and an oversight board with a 33 per cent quota for women. It closes loopholes in previous laws like the Pakistan Penal Code sections 332 and 334. The Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Act 2022 established special courts for rape cases and prohibited degrading two-finger tests. Provincial domestic violence laws criminalize physical and emotional abuse. And the Pakistan Penal Code, section 302, already provides the death penalty for murder including honour killings.
Yet the Quetta acid attack happened. The Jhang gang-rape happened. The murdered wife happened. Because laws that are not enforced, that do not apply everywhere and are undermined by negligent police and biased judges those laws are just words on paper. The fatal flaw of the Acid and Burn Crime Act 2025 is that it applies only to the Islamabad Capital Territory. The woman in Quetta is not covered. The gang-rape survivor in Jhang falls under Punjab’s separate framework. Between 2014 and 2023, Punjab alone reported over 1,200 acid attack cases, according to the Aurat Foundation. Sindh reported approximately 300.The Anusha case of 2021 where a family refused to pursue charges to ‘protect honour’ is not an exception but the rule in rural Pakistan.
Acid attacks are just one form of violence. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, over 4,000 women were killed in honour killings between 2015 and 2020. The Digital Rights Foundation reported a 300 per cent increase in online harassment in 2023.The Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey found that over 40 per cent of married women have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of their husbands, rising to nearly 60 per cent in rural areas.
So, what is broken? Jurisdiction fragmentation: the Acid Act covers only Islamabad and the Anti-Rape Act requires provincial implementation that has not occurred. Negligent investigation: police routinely refuse to file FIRs. The Kasur case of 2019, where an attacker was acquitted despite evidence, is textbook. Judicial bias: women are asked what they were wearing or whether they ‘provoked’ their husbands. Witness intimidation is rampant. Only five major burn centres exist nationwide. And no national database tracks gender-based violence.
What must be done? First, the federal government must secure identical violence-against-women acts in all four provinces within six months. Second, fast-track courts for all gender-based violence must be established nationwide with mandatory six-month trial deadlines. Third, the death penalty must be explicitly available for gang-rape resulting in severe injury or death, for acid throwing causing permanent disfigurement or death and for honour killings, with automatic High Court appeals within 30 days. Fourth, a national database of all gender-based violence cases must be created.
Fifth, the federal victim compensation fund must subsidize one-stop crisis centres in every district. Bangladesh’s Acid Survivors Foundation model worked because it was not just a law but a system it has assisted over 3,500 survivors, raised conviction rates from less than 5 per cent to around 30 per cent and reduced attacks by 65 per cent through advocacy. Sixth, mandatory training for all police, prosecutors and judges on trauma-informed case handling. Seventh, witness protection and survivor anonymity must become national law. Eighth, nationwide awareness campaigns must combat the stigma that leads families to abandon cases to ‘protect honour’.
The Acid and Burn Crime Act 2025 is a landmark achievement. But a law that covers only Islamabad is like a hospital that treats only the capital. The Quetta acid attack survivor, the Jhang gang-rape survivor and the murdered wife deserved that hospital. So does every woman in Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Bangladesh proved that change is possible. Pakistan has the law. It has the model. What it lacks is the will to make that law apply to every woman, everywhere. The blood in Quetta and Jhang is the proof. Until that changes, Pakistani women will keep burning, bleeding and dying — and the nation will keep calling it a tragedy when it is, in fact, a choice.
—The writer is a legal observer and contributing columnist with an LLB (Hons) degree.
