Daily Times

As we were joking, laughing and enjoying our meal a four-year-old Jannat was been brutally gang-raped. Her innocent shivering body has been abused in the most cringe-worthy manner.

While we were moving on with our lives, her injured, bleeding and unconscious body was dumped in 80-feet-deep well.

While we were snuggling in our warm beds her small body lay there exposed to the bone-chilling cold deep down in that pit of darkness.

As we complained about our cold feet, her teeth were clattering and her body shivering in that unbearable chill.

While we enjoyed the warmth of the sun, her tormented eyes looked up from that pit of darkness longing to see light.

And as we fed ourselves warm food, her abused body remained starved, for FOUR DAYS. For FOUR long days, Jannat stayed in that hell. Four days of starvation, unbearable pain, bleeding, teeth clattering cold and whatnot.

For four days, she cried, screamed, faded in and out of consciousness and jolted awake by terrible nightmares. And despite the hell that she went through she still clung to whatever was left of life. Her tiny fingers kept digging and scratching her surroundings desperate to find her way out.

Despite all the pain she endured, that strong warrior never gave up.

Such strong was her resolve to survive that after four long days of unbearable sufferings when her shivering body was finally pulled out of that well, she was alive. Her fingers were bleeding and swollen up from all the futile efforts she put up trying to escape.

It was after she was rushed to the hospital that she succumbed to her injuries and breathed her last.

No matter how hard we try we can never imagine her pain. All that we can imagine is just a fragment of what she went through.

Tragedies like Zainab’s, Farishtas and now Jannats put a huge question mark on the fate of our girls. What was there fault?

What’s pathetic is that a large segment of our society blames the women for such incidents. It is because we don’t hide behind the burkas and thus spread obscenity in this society which triggers the men to commit such crimes.

In our society, we always have given a clean chit to men. Our religious scholars and some politicians would blame the way women dress and on what the media portrays because according to them, men have no control over themselves

How long will we keep on putting restrictions on women? Is hiding them behind burkas the solution? Does it make a difference for that monster committing such crimes whether the girls are in burkas or diapers? NOT!

In our society, we always have given a clean chit to men. Our religious scholars and some politicians would blame the way women dress and on what the media portrays because according to them, men have no control over themselves. Till when will we keep treating men that way?

We should be ashamed because we have failed our children. We should be ashamed because our girls are not safe. If we recall our childhood, we remember how freely we used to play in the streets. Today, no parents would allow their children to play outside because it’s not safe. We have snatched from our children their freedom. From this age, they are not free and when they grow up they are pushed under the weight of other restrictions.

And then the patriarchs dare to abuse the feminists and say that women already have their rights in Pakistan. Are these our rights? That even a small child is not safe. Is this freedom that every time a girl goes out she is scared.

We can see a huge response to a mere ”AURAT MARCH,” angry, hot-blooded men screaming their heads off, but when it comes to tragedies like this we are calm. A few days of protests, a few moving speeches, a few documentaries made a few awards won and the next day there is another tragedy. And if the situation remains the same who knows who will be the next victim?

The government must take quick actions to catch these barbarians and sentence them to the most severe punishment ever. Because we already saw that the punishment for Zainab’s rapist hasn’t scared these barbarians. There have been frequent reports of similar cases after that.

Jannat today is residing in paradise but the Lucifers responsible for these horrendous act are still out there. And now it is the government’s responsibility to punish them in such a way that Jannat’s case remains the last one.

The writer is an economist, environmentalist, feminist, an animal rights activist and a poet