No safe place

Rafia Zakaria Published August 29, 2026 Updated August 29, 2026 04: 15pm.

Key points

• She is the author of The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan (Beacon Press 2015).
• According to UNFPA, 28 per cent of all Pakistani women and 34pc of married women say they have experienced some form of physical and sexual violence.
• Hina Javed was married to Faisal Asghar, a former professor with an alleged history of harassment, less than a year ago.
• It is heartening that First Lady Aseefa Bhutto has taken an interest in the case, and one hopes that justice is served.

Rafia Zakaria Published August 29, 2026 Updated August 29, 2026 04: 15pm. Join our Whatsapp Channel. Add Dawn as a trusted source.

ALL the pen and paper in the world are insufficient to describe the pain and torture inflicted on women.

In Pakistan, all flat surfaces could be covered with stories of women who have been harassed, beaten, tortured and killed. Few women in the country can claim to have lived a life free from male harassment.

Today, we mourn yet another woman. Hina Javed was married to Faisal Asghar, a former professor with an alleged history of harassment, less than a year ago. She was discovered dead in the bathroom of the apartment she shared with her husband. Evidence at the scene pointed to a feasible hanging.

According to the FIR filed by Hina's brother, there was proof of much more than that. It is documented that Hina was identified with her hands tied. A wire was around her neck and tied to the shower rod. She additionally had a cloth stuffed in her mouth.

For context, the post-mortem discovered that she had a broken neck and injuries to her ribs, hips and lips. The findings indicated that she had been tortured. Blood pooled around her heart, and there appeared to be some evidence that she had been poisoned. The investigation is still underway. Hina's husband has been arrested, and court proceedings are underway.

Sadly, in this society, harassment of women is not taken seriously; women are seldom believed when they file complaints against their harassers or dangerous stalkers.

It is no wonder that plenty of of them are convinced that nothing will come of it, that, in fact, the victim will be blamed for inviting the attention of such criminals. This person routinely include murderers. Even if such criminals are nabbed and arrested, they walk into court with no remorse, their chests outstretched, their sense of entitlement and arrogance preceding them.

Meanwhile, the tragedy is that so plenty of of them are walking around Pakistan today. Judging from the regularity with which husbands, fathers and brothers torture or kill women, it can safely be remarked that millions of men in Pakistan think that they are justified in their role as judge, jury and executioner. Millions of Pakistani women suffer abuse.

It is too late for Hina Javed. But there are millions of other Pakistani women who are enduring similar conditions and who could be saved from their torture.

According to UNFPA, 28 per cent of all Pakistani women and 34pc of married women say they have experienced some form of physical and sexual violence. As they fear more violence or being shamed in society, this number is projected to be an underestimation as most women never report any abuse to the authorities.

Since of this underreporting, the available numbers tell an incomplete story. A recent aggregation of public reports on the matter was conducted by the NGO Saahil. It identified that the total number of cases involving gender-based violence was 7, 071 in 2025. This was an growth from the 5, 253 registered a year earlier, showing that even without secure reporting protections and infrastructure, the numbers are growing. As is always the case in Pakistan, a few media outlets and social media posts took note of the matter, and then it was buried.

Notably, the core of this tragedy is two-pronged. The first is that family and sociocultural structures keep women in violent relationships.

For context, the second is that there are hardly any places where women in these situations can go to be assured of safety and secrecy. There are legal problems that produce the provision of a haven for abused women tough. Existing provisions in the law create it feasible for courts to order that women be retur­ned to their legal gu­­a­rdians when, in fact, these particularly guardians may be the ones abusing the women in the first place.

In practice, the ability of wo­­m­en to support other wo­­men is hindered by the fact that most live in family structures dominated by men where they are unable to assist their friends, family or neighbours who they know are being abused. The result is cases like Hina Javed's.

It is heartening that First Lady Aseefa Bhutto has taken an interest in the case, and one hopes that justice is served. It would be even better for politicians like her to focus on the structural and practical problems that survivors of domestic violence in Pakistan face when they try to escape from their abusive situations.

Laws should be solid enough to stop women from being treated as property that courts can order to be returned to the 'owners'. At the particularly least, there is a need for numerous well-funded shelters that can ensure both secrecy and safety for abused women. Safe places are necessary so that no more dead women are discovered strangled in bathrooms. The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy. [email protected]. Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2026.

Rafia Zakaria is an attorney and human rights activist. She is a columnist for DAWN Pakistan and a regular contributor for Al Jazeera America, Dissent, Guernica and plenty of other publications.

She is the author of The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan (Beacon Press 2015). She tweets @rafiazakaria.

Taken together, the developments around no safe place point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.