Another headline. Another daughter who will never come home.
In Pakistan, womanhood is often shadowed by silence and too often sealed in a shroud. For the women and girls of this country, the cost of living is too often their lives. They just never know when and where they, too, will become a victim of power and aggression.
The Imperfect Victim of Honour Killing: Qandeel Baloch
We remember the name Qandeel Baloch. The first social media star of Pakistan who made “lives too difficult” and was suffocated to death.
Qandeel was a young woman who dared to live life on her own terms. Whether her choices aligned with religious norms is another question, but they harmed no one.
However, one fine day, her fate was decided by her brother, who strangled her in her sleep. Why? Because he claimed “honour” and with pride he smiled in court.
He was later released, and since then, no one has been convicted of Qandeel’s murder.
Zainab Ansari’s Blood on Nation’s Hands
We’ve cried for Zainab. Only seven years old; too young to spell “justice’ and too innocent to know the ugliness that stalked her steps.
She was abducted, raped and dumped like garbage in a heap in Kasur. For days, the police slept. For weeks, the country wept. It’s soil soaked up yet another story of femicide.
Her angelic green eyes were everywhere. Her name trended for “hashtag justice”. Politicians promised for their votes. Then silence fell again — until the next victim (Zainab was already the 7th victim of the same criminal).
The Motorway Rape Victim That Was “Out Too Late”
We shook with rage during the Motorway Incident.
A mother, travelling with her children, was stranded on the Lahore-Sialkot motorway in 2020. She was gang-raped in front of those very children. But it was ‘her fault,’ said the city’s police chief and then-Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Why? Because “Why was she out late at night? Why didn’t she call a man?”
It was not the predator’s fault that he thought of this heinous act, nor was it the state’s fault that it left a stretch of highway unpatrolled and women unprotected.
The story went viral. There were protests. And yet here we are, years later, with nothing changed but the names of the victims.
Justice Delayed for Womanhood in Noor Mukadam’s Case
Then came Noor Mukadam. A case so grotesque it shook even the most apathetic among us.
Locked, tortured, beheaded, all done in the heart of Islamabad. The killer, Zahir Jaffer, was a wealthy, educated and connected nepo baby. It helped him hide the fact that he was, in fact, a lunatic who survived media consumption from the Dark Web.
Even with all the evidence, the case took 4 years to finally reach justice, that too while plaguing Noor’s character with derogatory comments.
Since Noor, many more Noors have fallen. Women stabbed in marketplaces, burned alive by lovers, shot by fathers, raped by brothers, buried in fields.
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Murder of Sana Yousaf Exposes the Rot in Our Society
And now, just a few days after Noor Mukadam’s 4-year delayed justice, another life has been lost. Another child who had her whole future ahead of her. The cold-blooded murder of Sana Yousaf.
Sana Yousuf was a 17-year-old Chitrali medical student who was shot in her own house in Islamabad on Monday evening, 2nd June. Why? Because she dared say “no” to her killer’s advances on her. And of course, his fragile ego couldn’t handle it.
When the news went viral on the internet, people went crazy. The woman couldn’t sleep at night yet again.
How Many More Hashtags? How Many More Souls?
We treat these deaths like accidents: rare, unfortunate and isolated. But they are not. They are a systemic by-product of a country that devalues women at every level. A country that earns millions by romanticising the torture of women on screens.
What connects Zainab, the motorway survivor and Sana? Different ages, different regions, different stories — but the same sick culture. The same failure to protect. The same refusal to change.
“In the Dua Zehra, Noor Mukadam, and motorway rape cases, the media, particularly digital media outlets, weaponised false and private information to blame the victims for the crimes committed against them and assassinate their characters. Gendered disinformation, in this light, has been around for a while, as a tool of voice for patriarchal attitudes and narratives,” says Shmyla Khan of Digital Rights Foundation (DRF)
What we call “family matters” are femicides wrapped in shame and silence. And what is more enraging than knowing that nothing happens after? No reforms. No protection. Just another hashtag.
Let the murder of Sana Yousaf enrage you. Let it be your final straw. Because the cost of womanhood in Pakistan should never be a grave.
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