In a city designed to reflect the state’s illusion of order, Karachi became the stage for an incident that shattered that illusion. A man-well-dressed, well-armed, and well-connected-dragged another citizen into the street, beat him in front of his children, and brandished a firearm with the confidence of someone enacting power rather than fearing consequence. The victim’s silence speaks volumes about the resignation many now feel in the face of this collapsing order.
The episode, captured on video and circulated widely, eventually jolted state institutions into action. It took hashtags and public outrage for an FIR to be registered and a suspect named. Only then did the machinery of law begin to move. A more urgent question remains: how many such acts unfold daily in Pakistan-unfilmed, unreported, unresolved?
This was not an exception. It reflects a grim reality where the rule of law has become a selective convenience. In Sialkot, a Sri Lankan factory manager was lynched and burned. In Nankana Sahib, a crowd stormed a police station to kill a detainee. In Swat, a mentally ill man was paraded and set on fire. In Karachi, civilians lynched over 50 suspected robbers between 2022 and 2024. Each case shows how punishment has migrated from courts to crowds.
The roots of this crisis go deeper than legal dysfunction. Years of appeasing extremist sentiment, the sanctification of mob anger, and repeated failures to prosecute hate speech have shaped a climate where moral certainty is prized above the legal process. Law loses meaning when its application depends on status. When justice becomes a private negotiation instead of a shared right, violence starts wearing the uniform of legitimacy.
The country’s history offers enough blood-stained evidence to show that no republic can function if mobs decide what is right and who deserves punishment.
Reviving the idea of justice demands more than ceremony. Police reform must come first-depoliticisation, accountability, and protection for those most vulnerable to collective violence. Legal procedures must operate swiftly, visibly, and without interference. Religious scholars and civic leaders must be mobilised to speak against vengeance disguised as virtue. Social media platforms, long used to amplify incitement, must be held responsible under the law.
A society cannot endure when silence feels safer than the law. Every time a citizen looks away and says, “nothing will happen,” the damage deepens. The idea of a shared republic fades. Once it disappears, it rarely returns. *