Sana was 17. A girl with a voice, a life, and a boundary she had every right to draw. She said no. And for that, she was murdered. Shot by a man who believed her refusal was not a right but a rebellion.
What followed was more chilling than the act itself. The silence. The smirks. The justifications. A swarm of commentary not about the man who pulled the trigger but about the girl who dared to say no. Where was her family? Why was she online? Why was she visible? In Pakistan, it seems, a woman’s mere existence in public space is treated as provocation and her death, an inevitability.
We all know how this is a pattern. A sickening pattern in a culture that grants men limitless entitlement while demanding women carry the burden of their own protection, silence, and invisibility. What do you expect, they ask, when a girl refuses a man? What do you expect, they imply, when a woman dares to live beyond the boundaries of their comfort?
To all those commentators daring to add a romantic connotation, I say: mark my words, this was no crime of passion. It was a punishment for autonomy. The same sentence meted out to Qandeel Baloch, to Noor Mukaddam, to every girl who stepped outside the perimeter drawn by a patriarchal morality masquerading as religion. Our society does not fear women who sin. It fears women who choose. That is what threatens the order.
Sana’s story will be forgotten, like so many before her, unless we break this pattern.
We call these “honour killings,” but whose honour are we speaking of? The man’s? The family’s? The neighbourhood’s? We have turned murder into morality, and vengeance into virtue. And even when the law, such as the Anti-Honor Killing Act, says no compromise can absolve this crime, our courts, our communities, and our clerics look the other way.
And where does this thinking come from? Not foreign media. Not individual pathology. But from sermons where control is cloaked as protection. From drawing rooms where daughters are taught obedience and sons are taught ownership. From classrooms that never mention consent. From police reports that ask about the girl’s behaviour, not the boy’s weapon. From a system that sees female will as a disorder.
What is the cost of a girl saying no in Pakistan? It is her life. But the greater tragedy is that so many of us find ways to rationalize that cost. The rot is not just legal. It is cultural, spiritual, and linguistic. It is in how we name women. How we bury them. How we erase them after their deaths by blaming them for being alive.
Sana’s story will be forgotten, like so many before her, unless we break this pattern. Not by lighting candles, but by changing the curriculum. By unlearning what we were taught to fear in women. By demanding that justice is not something begged for. It is something owed.
She was 17. And her crime was that she chose to exist without apology.
The shame is not hers. It never was.
The writer is OpEd Editor (Daily Times) and can be reached at durenayab786 @gmail.com. She tweets @DureAkram