June in Quetta marks summer in its most oppressive sense as daytime temperatures start to soar. The month also marks the end of the Government fiscal year. Businesses are busy reconciling their accounts, bureaucrats are buried in ledgers, politicians line up outside Finance offices, and influentials can be seen trying to get a piece of the PSDP pie. Together, they raise the temperature of the city yet another degree.
On 5th June 2026, however, the city was consumed by a different kind of heat – far more sinister and deeply unsettling. A female doctor working as a postgraduate trainee at the largest tertiary care hospital in the province is subjected to an acid attack. Social media erupts, civil society gets agitated, and doctors are enraged. The outrage was understandable. The victim, after all, was a doctor who had been attacked at her workplace.
Doctors immediately demanded bringing the fleeing perpetrator to justice and giving the best care to the victim. The Government responds. The victim immediately undergoes emergency decontamination at Sandeman Provincial Hospital. The recently launched People’s Emergency Air Ambulance gets ready and shifts the patient to Aga Khan University Hospital, same day, on the insistence of her family. The perpetrator, in no time, is reportedly identified and killed in an encounter while attempting to flee to his native district. When Government functionaries, including the Secretary Health and the Deputy Inspector General of Police arrive at the hospital to brief the media and the public including doctors, something unexpected happens. A group of young doctors, amidst intense sloganeering, launches into a profane tirade against the Secretary Health for being responsible for the incident and the police for killing the perpetrator. The Secretary remains calm in the charged environment and handles the situation with what can only be described as a physical manifestation of “grace under fire.” The assertion by the doctors that an unseen hand has orchestrated the attack through a puppet perpetrator left me genuinely perplexed.
Was Dr Mahnoor targeted because she was a doctor or because she was a woman?
One question kept returning to me: was this really an attack on a profession, or was it something related to the ailment of the society which lets such cases happen in our region with impunity? I quickly turned to the literature to explore and understand this issue at a deeper level. I came across facts which are generally unknown to people like me. According to the Acid Survivors Trust International (ASTI), globally, nearly 80 percent of acid attack victims are women. Cultural context, however, matters. In countries such as the United Kingdom, acid attacks are often gang-related and the majority of victims are men. In South Asia, by contrast, the overwhelming majority of victims are women, and acid is frequently used as a weapon to enforce patriarchal control.
Different theoretical frameworks attempting to explain acid attacks ultimately converge on similar themes. Patriarchy establishes men as the dominant gender and primary breadwinners while expecting women to remain subordinate to men. In this context, after exhausting other tactics and tools, acid remains an instrument of terror to enforce masculinity over femininity, especially when women challenge this status quo and pursue their independence or personal autonomy through established careers. Matters are further complicated by the deeply entrenched belief within a male dominated society that a woman’s body embodies the honour of the family, and any breach of it is considered as a blasphemy. This narrative then perpetuates the cycle of violence against women by discouraging them from pursuing justice for themselves that, in turn, does not deter the future perpetrators from throwing acid on any innocent woman, ruining her life.
Viewed through this lens, the Quetta incident should have become a galvanizing moment for civil society to unite in advocacy and meaningful discourse. Reforms and legislative changes should have been intensely deliberated at this moment rather than be eluded or diverted by a mere agenda of a union, leaving the larger societal injustice unaddressed. Was Dr. Mahnoor targeted because she was a doctor, or because she was a woman? If a woman employed in one of the noblest professions, possessing education and financial independence cannot be protected from gender-based violence, what hope remains for the millions of ordinary women devoid of education and financial say, across Pakistan?
Shall we continue allowing this issue to be exploited for political mileage, or will we come together to demand stricter regulation of acid sales and the establishment of special tribunals for the expeditious disposal of acid attack cases, as has been done in Bangladesh? We will have to finally declare that no individual, irrespective of gender, should easily access any means of exploitation or personal harm including the purchase of acids without a justifiable reason and verifiable identification.
Easier said than done. The recent Supreme Court judgment has described acid attacks as crimes more heinous than murder because survivors are forced to endure lifelong physical and psychological suffering. Its directions for speedy trials, effective enforcement, and comprehensive rehabilitation of survivors provide a clear roadmap. The real test now lies in translating these directions into meaningful action. Similar is the case at hand that we are experiencing in the Dr. Mahnoor incident. Justice in her case must therefore extend beyond the fate of the perpetrator; it must also ensure effective implementation of these measures so that no future victim is forced to endure the same irreversible trauma.
The writer is a member of the National Assembly.