Blood in Quetta, Jhang and across Pakistan

Adv Arsalan Zafar JUST days ago, a young woman in Quetta had acid thrown across her face for rejecting a marriage proposal. In Jhang, another woman was gang-raped and dumped at a hospital like refuse. In Punjab, a husband murdered his wife because she refused him intimacy. These are not isolated horrors. They are three faces of the same epidemic violence against women in Pakistan, a crisis so pervasive and so poorly addressed that women are dying faster than the law can be rewritten to save them. Pakistan has a legal architecture that, on paper, promises protection. The Acid and Burn Crime Act 2025 criminalizes acid and fire-related violence with strict penalties, including the death penalty if the attack results in death, up to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment for causing injury and makes all offences non-bailable and non-compoundable. It mandates 30-day investigations, 60-day fast-track trials, witness protection, free medical treatment and rehabilitation for survivors, a federal victim compensation fund and an oversight board with a 33 per cent quota for women. It closes loopholes in previous laws like the Pakistan Penal Code sections 332 and 334. The Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Act 2022 established special courts for rape cases and prohibited degrading two-finger tests. Provincial domestic violence laws criminalize physical and emotional abuse. And the Pakistan Penal Code, section 302, already provides the death penalty for murder including honour killings. Yet the Quetta acid attack happened. The Jhang gang-rape happened. The murdered wife happened. Because laws that are not enforced, that do not apply everywhere and are undermined by negligent police and biased judges those laws are just words on paper. The fatal flaw of the Acid and Burn Crime Act 2025 is that it applies only to the Islamabad Capital Territory. The woman in Quetta is not covered. The gang-rape survivor in Jhang falls under Punjab’s separate framework. Between 2014 and 2023, Punjab a