News Desk
LAHORE, Pakistan — The air was thick with the scent of henna and the hum of anticipation in a modest home on the outskirts of this sprawling city. It was Thursday morning, and 23-year-old Saira was meant to step into the next chapter of her life, her wedding procession just hours away. Instead, she lay lifeless on a blood-soaked mattress, a bullet lodged in her skull, her dreams extinguished in a single, brutal act. Her family says the man who pulled the trigger was no stranger—he was her to-be-husband.
The gunshot rang out at 5:30 a.m., shattering the pre-dawn stillness. Jameela Bibi, Saira’s mother, was jolted awake, her heart pounding as she stumbled toward the sound. What she found would haunt her forever: her daughter, radiant just hours earlier at her mehndi ceremony, now a crumpled figure, blood pooling beneath her head. Nearby, her son-in-law bolted from the room, a pistol glinting in his hand, his footsteps echoing as he fled into the darkness.
“He murdered my girl,” Jameela wept, her voice raw with grief and fury, as she spoke to reporters outside the Sundar Police Station later that day. Her words trembled with a mother’s anguish, but also with a bitter resolve, a plea to a system that too often turns a blind eye.
Saira’s uncle, Shoukat Ali, painted a chilling picture of the suspect’s calculated escape. “He shot her while she slept,” he said, his eyes hollow as he recounted the scene. “Then he tossed the gun into an empty lot next door, claimed he was sick, and asked to leave—like some coward playacting his way out of a slaughter.” The family’s account is a damning indictment of a man they once trusted, now a fugitive in their eyes.
The police arrived swiftly, cordoning off the house as forensic teams combed through the wreckage of a celebration turned crime scene. An Edhi Foundation ambulance waited silently outside, its grim purpose a stark contrast to the festive banners still fluttering in the breeze. By midday, Saira’s body was carted to the morgue, her wedding lehenga replaced by a shroud. The first information report, filed under Pakistan’s murder statute, Section 302, names the to-be-husband and her to-be-brother-in-law as the killer. But in a country where justice is a rare guest, the family’s hope feels fragile.
This is Pakistan in 2025, where the promise of a new day can end in a hail of violence, especially for women. Saira’s story is not an anomaly—it’s a thread in a tapestry of brutality that stretches across this nation of 240 million. Here, the home, often touted as a sanctuary, doubles as a battleground. Last month, in Lahore’s Liaquatabad quarter, a woman was arrested for hacking her husband’s second wife to death and dumping her body like refuse. The headlines pile up, each one a fresh wound: a sister strangled, a daughter burned, a bride shot. The perpetrators? Too often, the men they know best—husbands, brothers, fathers.
Pakistan’s government crows about progress—new laws, task forces, hotlines—but the reality on the ground tells a different story. Patriarchal traditions choke the life out of reform, and law enforcement, underfunded and overburdened, stumbles. Courts crawl at a glacial pace, and convictions are scarce. For every case like Saira’s that makes it to a police ledger, countless others vanish into silence, buried under threats or shame. The state’s failure is a quiet accomplice to the bloodshed.
Back at the house, the guests who’d danced and laughed through the mehndi were gone, leaving behind a stillness pierced only by Jameela’s sobs. The henna on Saira’s hands hadn’t even dried when the bullet stole her breath. Her wedding procession never came. Instead, her family prepared for a funeral, their joy replaced by a rage that may never find an answer.
Violence against women in Pakistan is not just a string of tragedies—it’s an epidemic. While exact figures are elusive, hampered by underreporting and a culture of impunity, the data that exists is staggering. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimates that at least 1,000 women are killed annually in so-called honor killings, often by family members. Domestic violence, meanwhile, touches nearly one in three Pakistani women, according to a 2023 survey by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
Globally, the picture is no less grim. A November 2024 report by UN Women and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime found that 85,000 women and girls were intentionally killed in 2023, with the vast majority slain by intimate partners or relatives. In Pakistan, that statistic feels like a mirror held up to a nation that has yet to reckon with its demons. For women like Saira, the threat doesn’t lurk in dark alleys—it sleeps beside them, eats at their table, and, too often, decides their fate.
