Rape Culture: The Terrified State of Women in Pakistan

Fatima Rizwan

September 13, 2022

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Mukhtara Mai, Safia Bibi, and Zainab Noor are not just names but stories of injustices

shared by the number of women that report a rape case daily in Pakistan and the ones that suffer

in silence. A harsh reality is that sexual violence persists in every corner of the world but in

Pakistan’s case, the legislation regarding rape and sexual assault is seemingly counterproductive

with little to no effectiveness since the legal setup is mostly used as a tool to not only silence but

also shame the victim. In recent years, there has been a surge in the number of rape cases in

Pakistan that have been highlighted in the media just as much; however, what often gets the least

amount of coverage is the number of cases that are prosecuted, which is significantly lower than

the reported. Due to legal loopholes, social pressures, and lack of education reporting a rape in

Pakistan becomes a crime for the victim, creating a norm in which the victims find it befitting to

remain quiet since the victim fears character assassination and in some cases absolute

abandonment from family members as they believe the honor of the family is breached.

With 11 rape cases being reported daily, the number of cases in the past 6 years has

crossed 22,000 but in all these years only 0.3% have been prosecuted. This is mainly due to the

state’s negligence in ensuring laws that protect the victim.

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Even though rape is considered to be a crime against the State of Pakistan, the process of

reporting and reliving the experience in front of a court multiple times is utterly demeaning.

According to a Pakistani attorney, Khawaja Omar Masood, the country’s legal system thrives off

the assassination of a woman’s moral character. “If a college girl is being raped by someone and

the FIR is being registered against the man, the lawyer of the man will try to prove that she has

other illicit relationships with other men and this is just an attempt of blackmail”, said Masood.

It is important to note that there are laws in Pakistan that have been amended to support the

victim and under the enforcement of Offence of Zina 1979, the woman can report to the police

and an FIR is registered against the accused to begin the process of prosecution. Comparing this

to the laws that required four male witnesses to acknowledge rape has been committed, this is a

step in the right direction. However, the misuse of such laws speaks to the low rates of

prosecutions.

According to Masood, asking the woman about what the accused was wearing, the time

on the clock, or questions about her virginity and sexual relationship are a way to ‘shake the
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credibility of the witness in order to prove that the witness has less evidential value.’ The legal

process that follows these procedures is also unrealistically time consuming. According to

lawyer and Assistant Professor at LUMS Pakistan, Marva Khan said that these cases can take up

to 10-14 years as the victim has to appeal from one court to another. This is the treatment for

those that have the courage to report which is mostly from upper- or middle-class families. There

is a population of women that suffer from marital and non-marital rape and are unable to report it

due to either the fear of character assassination or a lack of education.

When looking at rape cases in Pakistan, class systems are an important factor that needs

to be considered. In the year 2020, most rape cases were reported in Punjab - a province that is

heavily populated. In order to understand the relationship between literacy rates and number of

rapes reported, it was seen that a high literacy rate meant less number of rapes reported however,

that does not mean it does not exist rather most cases go unreported. ‘Literacy’ here means

knowing how to read and write and high figures can be seen in the province of Balochistan and

KPK. However, knowing how to read and write does not qualify for a good enough factor to be

associated with the number of rapes reported because of the difference in urban and rural areas.

Punjab has the highest literacy rates but is also a province with several rural areas due to which it

is difficult to form a relationship between these two factors. The lowest literacy rates are in KPK

and Balochistan where the legal system is tribal. “Middle class families report more than any

other class because they are more educated, but in tribal areas a panchaid system [tribe leader

decides the ruling of matters] is followed where women are often killed due to honor killings or

incidents of rapes are less likely to be reported”, said Masood. In the cases of rape, most

perpetuators are often the relatives of the victim and that plays a very important role in the dip

that comes in the number of unreported cases. “There have been cases where women have been
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forced to withdraw cases against their rapists simply because they could not find the lawyer or

did not have the money”, said Khan.

The lack of education is not only an issue with the women but also in the police. A

research study showed that contrary to the rest of the world, the police officials in Pakistan do

not have adequate training and their education is seriously neglected, preventing them from

tackling modern day challenges. According to Masood, no one from an educated family wants to

commit their career in the police resulting in an uneducated workforce that will discard important

evidence and care very little about women's issues. In the past few years, police officials have

victim-blamed, mishandled FIR investigations, and physically assaulted women. When a woman

wants to report her rape to the police, up until 2020, she had to go through an invasive two-finger

testing to be more “There is honestly a lack of awareness and sensitivity across the judiciary of

Pakistan”, Khan said. According to a Geo News investigation, only 41% of rape cases get

reported to the police because there is a high social pressure, and the existence of legal loopholes

discourage the victim from reaching out.

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The biggest challenge Pakistan faces is the apathy and lack of sensitivity towards the

issue of rape. Little details are held against the victim while overlooking psychological trauma

one has to bear. “Generally women do not want to go to the police because there is not only

physical trauma but also huge psychological trauma.” The fear women face with the line of

questioning is yet another obstacle which discourages the victim from making herself heard

while also inducing stress due to a disfavoring system that is based on structurally

institutionalized sexism.

Taking the case of Mukhtara Mai - a woman that was gang raped in 2002 and her accused

were acquitted in her judgement - was a woman that narrated her shirt to be torn from a slightly

different angle than it actually was and this trivial discrepancy was held against her. To help the

judgement, A Reasonable Man Standard - allowing an individual in their senses to reenact the

way one would normally in circumstances - is used in Pakistan’s legal system “This is very
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problematic especially in sexual assault cases because even the lack of bruises is sometimes seen

synonymous to consent and lack of wanting to fight back, according to Khan. She said Pakistan’s

law is very primitive as it does not factor in the psychological trauma of a victim. This goes back

to what Masood mentions that in the legal system of Pakistan assassinating a woman’s character

is the key to winning a case against the victim.

The misuse of laws can only be tackled if adequate training is given to judges. “Although

DNA testing has been accepted as secondary evidence, many judges disregard it simply because

they have not accepted the change,” said Khan regarding the new changes in the law. Despite the

removal of two-finger testing and the law being more accepting towards victims, unless and until

an adequate training is given to judges and more efforts are made to normalize conversations

about rape within communities, a change cannot be seen. Masood dis-heartedly said, “I have yet

to see a rape survivor live happily or peacefully in Pakistan.”

A flawed legal system and an ignorant society can be seen in Pakistan where a woman

that gets raped gets labeled with a low character, but very rarely does she receive justice. The

mindset regarding rape in society is not one that sees the victim as oppressed but rather the

society makes an effort to paint the victim as immoral. The lack of cases that are prosecuted are

from the normalization of the victim’s immoral character and the law being a tool that is used

against the female in every step of the process. Character assassinations, disrespectful line of

questioning, and the fear of speaking up all are a factor that reduce the number of accused

prosecutions and continues to corner women that cannot report their trauma due to a lack of

education and the social pressure of losing honor.