On the night of February 5, in Khuzdar district of Pakistan’s Balochistan province, a group of armed men led by Zahoor Jamalzai forcibly entered Asma Jattak’s home and harassed her family before abducting her.
Zahoor is the brother of the nahib (tribal secretary/assistant) to the sardar (tribal chief) and Balochistan’s former Chief Minister Nawab Sanaullah Khan Zehri. He has been tormenting Asma’s family for more than a decade. In 2012, he allegedly murdered Asma’s fiancé and had since pressured her family to marry her. Upon her family’s refusal, he abducted Asma.
In response, Asma’s family, notably her professor brother, Attaullah Jattak, along with community members, took to the streets, blocking the Quetta-Karachi highway with a sit-in protest for at least three days. The incident sparked outrage on social media, and led to a walkout by the members of the Balochistan Provincial Assembly in protest.
On the second day, a video surfaced on social media, showing Asma saying that she went with Zahoor willingly. However, her family and community members continued the protest, claiming the abductors may have forced her to record a false statement.
Under pressure from the community and social media, and after a police raid, Asma was eventually released. But the main suspect, Zahoor, remains free.
The Asma episode highlights not only the dire security situation, especially for women, in Balochistan, but also draws attention to the impunity with which powerful men operate. Men with connections to influential sardars in Balochistan, who make their own rules in territories they claim as theirs, are usually exempted from legal consequences.
Many of these sardars run private prisons, where they torture and execute people, including women. However, these grave crimes go unchecked and unpunished. Law enforcement agencies act only when pressured and even then true accountability is almost non-existant.
Asma’s case can be analyzed from the perspective of the failure of law enforcement. So powerful and influential are the sardars that even those working under their authority feel entitled to harass families, violate their dignity, commit crimes like murder and abduction, and yet, remain free from accountability.
However, Asma’s case is also a reminder of another large, deep-rooted and common issue in Pakistan: violence against women. Women are unsafe even in the premises of their own homes, let alone outside.
The Istanbul Convention, a benchmark international legislation to protect women, frames violence against women as “a form of gender-based violence that is committed against women, because they are women.” It further states that it is the obligation of the state to prosecute the perpetrators of such crimes, and if the state institutions turn a blind eye, there can be no real equality and justice.
Asma belonged to a middle-class, educated family, which drew public attention to the crime perpetrated against her, without the fear of honor-related shame and societal stigma. Such concerns often overshadow the issue itself, especially in cases that involve women.
According to a report titled, “Mapping Gender-Based Violence in Pakistan” by the Sustainable Social Development Organization (SSDO), in 2024, over 24,000 cases of abductions and kidnappings were reported across Pakistan, ranking as one of the highest reported kinds of gender-based violence. On average, 67 cases were reported daily. But the conviction rate in such cases was a dismal 0.1 percent.
There may be thousands more cases that go unreported because families remain silent, fearing social stigma or surrendering to the intimidation by powerful tribal sardars, their private militias, or other armed men. Especially when such cases are related to women from marginalized communities, they hardly get reported. Even if they do, investigation and conviction are another long and exhausting process.
In 2024, Punjab reported the largest number of abduction cases in the country. but Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan also have high numbers.
Abductions of girls in Punjab are often tied with trafficking, rape, forced marriages, and forced labor. In Sindh, cases of abduction of women are tied to forced religious conversion and marriage. It is mostly young Hindu minority girls that are victims of such crimes. Many also link these forced conversions to the decline of the minority population in Sindh, from 25 percent in 1947 to only 3 percent in 2024.
In Balochistan, such cases are usually related to forced marriage and rape. However, there is still a denial of the existence of such crimes. The belief that Baloch society “honors its women” is deeply and widely ingrained and is often repeated in general discussions, conferences, or even at the Baloch Provincial Assembly.
But Balochs are not alone in this. None of Pakistan’s ethnic groups would openly admit to dishonoring their women, yet crimes against women are common. While the notion of “honoring women” may be a cultural value, it is not always upheld by everyone. By denying the existence of these crimes, a society can only contribute to the stigma around reporting them.
Violence against women is recognized the world over as one of the most common human rights violations, reflecting the number of crimes against women: abduction and kidnapping, sexual grooming, forced conversion and forced marriage, honor killing, domestic violence, rape, trafficking, mental or physical violence, and financial exploitation.
Thanks to global efforts, conventions like the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the U.N. Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women have come into effect. Governments and civil society worldwide as well as laws and judicial systems at least recognize the existence of these crimes, and work together to prevent and combat violence against women. Yet violence against women persists.
Pakistani society overall is characterized not only by a patriarchal order that is entrenched in society but also by power inequalities. These contribute to the criminal justice system, including the police and judiciary, failing to act in response to gender violence complaints. As per the SSDO report, over 2,000 cases of domestic violence, more than 500 cases of honor killings and over 5,000 cases of rape were reported across Pakistan in 2024, with conviction rates below 2 percent for each of these crimes.
Pakistan’s Penal Code is the primary legal framework for criminal offenses in Pakistan and covers a range of offenses and crimes against women. In addition, amendments have been made to pro-women legislations in recent years to address shortcomings. These include the Women Protection Bill (2006), Domestic Violence Prevention and Protection Acts in Sindh (2013) and Balochistan (2014), Punjab Protection of Women against Violence Act 2016, and the Prevention of Anti-Women Practices (Criminal Law Amendment) Act 2011.
Yet men like Zahoor and thousands of others continue to break the laws without any fear of conviction. This is because of poor implementation of the laws. While the trauma Asma and thousands of women go through daily cannot be undone, a structural change, where the rule of law is nonnegotiable, is necessary to ensure that other women do not suffer violence. Without an effective implementation of law, even a list of robust laws will leave women without any protection.
