I am a victim of the infamous Black Prado: Here is my story
They followed me. They stopped my car. Is this the Prado incident everyone is talking about? It was past midnight on a cold November night in 2012. I was returning home when my car crossed main Ittehad and went straight into Phase VIII, some 20 meters away from the first newly placed barrier. It was then that a policeman stopped our car, flashing his torch incessantly at the driver’s window. Being a woman, I did not expect to be stopped and I thought the minute the cop realised that I was in the car, he would gesture for us to go ahead. Strangely, this did not ...
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Every other rape story in Pakistan
In a small town or village in Pakistan, victim X (perhaps Y and Z too, who may be sisters, mothers or relatives) has [allegedly] been raped, gang-raped, often tortured, sometimes murdered and dumped in a ditch, a well, or close to their home. The actual rape lasts hours, days, weeks or even years. A few lurid, but contained details of the sexual assault go here, with large chunks cut out so as to not offend and/or titillate the readers. Additional details may be dropped because the district reporter’s English is atrocious, and his embellishments are suspect. In fact, the whole story may be ...
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Meet Vijanti, the 6-year-old victim of rape
Meet Vijanti, a girl dressed in beautiful red clothes playing like any other girl her age should. Meet Vijanti, a girl who will never be allowed to play outside her house again. Meet Vijanti, a girl who does not understand what happened to her. Meet Vijanti, a girl who acted on her parents’ advice and did not talk to the stranger but still suffered. Meet Vijanti, a six-year-old girl belonging to the Hindu community who was raped in early December 2012 in Umerkot, Sindh. I visited her in the Lyari General Hospital with a colleague from the HRCP on December 24, 2012. After ...
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Hear me now, as I scream from heaven
I, Nirbhaya Damini, have left my earthly abode. After fighting hard for two weeks, my mortal body has surrendered to grievous injuries, inflicted on it, by six human beasts. I must confide to you that I am happy in heaven as angels have sung beautiful songs on my arrival and have taken me on a round of green pastures and pristine blue lakes. I am also happy to escape the hallmarks of human existence on earth – pain, illness and injustice – and achieve eternal salvation. I must also tell you that as I had lived an ordinary, uneventful life for all ...
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Child abuse: Silence is never the solution, be a fighter!
To me she was an ordinary girl ─ every teacher’s favourite, scoring perfect marks in all the exams. Looking at her, I never realised that behind this perfect pretty face lived a tormented girl who held a dark secret. Behind her inscrutable face was a girl who constantly screamed but to no avail. However, recently she broke her silence and shared her story with me, while we were discussing Sidney Sheldon’s novel Tell Me Your Dreams. *Humera who belongs to the middle class and is 23-years-old now, was sexually abused when she was 12 by a grocer in his mid-forties. He owned ...
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Karachi’s killing fields: Gunshots that don’t touch our hearts
I met Hafiz Muhammad Waqas a day after he nearly died of gunshot wounds, in a target killing attempt. The electricity was out, Hafiz’s brother led me to a quiet dark room where he lay bandaged on a bed, talking over a cell-phone, assuring a concerned friend on the other side that ‘things were ok’. A single glance at his family, their traumatised looks, told me that things were not ‘ok’. This brings me to the question I want to ask today: Who do we care for? Our families, friends or friends of friends? Technically speaking, it has a lot to do with ...
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Kidnapping culture: They show no remorse
Just like all the other crimes, this one is a part and parcel of life in Karachi. Hearing about a case of abduction did not really give me goose bumps before. However, all this changed the day one of my own kin got kidnapped. Being a professor at a medical college, lecturer of another and a doctor, Reza* possessed all the qualities of being the perfect ‘victim.’ He was kidnapped on the outskirts of Karachi, on his way to the university along with the driver of the university car. His family did not know for hours and only tried to contact ...
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Salma’s story: Molested by her guardian
I first came across her on a Facebook forum in August 2010. The two of us were quite vocal on a forum made for the Sialkot brothers who had been publicly lynched during Ramazan that year. We often bumped into each other online and shared common passions and eventually decided to become “Facebook friends”. Hailing from an educated, upper middle class family, she seemed to be an ordinary 20-year-old girl. However, I soon began to realise that all was not truly well on my new friend’s side. The seemingly normal girl appeared to be a little – well, different. It looked to me as ...
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The politics of Kashmir killings
On May 1, the Supreme Court of India asked the Ministry of Defence to take a call on whether the six army officers accused of carrying out the “cold blooded murder” of five innocent civilians in the Pathribal village in Kashmir valley should be tried by court martial or in a regular civil court. The Pathribal incident dates back to then US President Bill Clinton’s visit to India on March 20, 2000. This was when 35 Sikhs in Chattisinghpora village of Kashmir were shot dead by unknown men carrying automatic weapons, alcohol bottles and a lust for blood. The massacre was blamed on the men ...
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Killed twice: Marrying the man who raped her
A young girl lay dead across the bedroom floor, and a small open bottle lay just mere inches from her hand with the words ‘rat poison’ printed across the label. She had just committed suicide - an act forbidden by the laws of God and nature. Her reason? She was ordered by a judge to marry the very man who had raped her. Amina Filali was just 16 when she ended her life. Only last year, Amina’s parents filed charges against their daughter’s rapist who was 10 years older than the teenager. The judge, in the Moroccan city of Tangier, concluded that rather than punishing him, the ...
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