Deeply disturbing details behind the murder of a poor woman at the hands of her husband in Karachi’s Quaidabad area – as if that in itself didn’t cross society’s limits of morality and decency – especially the agony of her last moments, have left whatever little still remains of this society’s conscience sick to the core. This, it turns out, was a girl first abducted, some years ago, by a taxi driver whose wife sold him to a lady (for Rs20,000) who prostituted her and later married her to her son. Then both mother and son kept her in the flesh trade and also tortured her upon resistance. On the night of her murder, she was ordered to “entertain” (in the words of her husband) her husband’s drunk friends. And when she refused, they beat and tortured her before tying her hands and feet, stabbing her multiple times, throwing acid on her face and then, when she died, throwing her body in a garbage dump somewhere. How could such grizzly barbarism have taken place in our midst for so long? And how many more of such helpless, suffering creatures would our cities and villages still be littered with? Just the other day civil society was fuming over a video featuring narcissistic degenerates showing off a spectacle of stripping, shaming, beating, abusing and sexually molesting a couple; just for kicks, as they say. And hardly a day goes by without news of another horrific rape case in which men, women and even little children become helpless victims of a serial criminal, mental deviant, or some cleric’s nauseating lust. Among the so many, many things ways in which we have gone astray as a society one thing that really stands out and has far-reaching implications is our collective loss of respect for women. It is truly shocking that a progressive country, especially one carved out in the name of Islam, now denies women the respect, dignity and palace in civil society that both the norms of civil society and the laws of our great religion demand. It’s also a very unfortunate fact, but not one which we can brush under the carpet any longer, that it’s of no use to look towards the religious fraternity either because a fair number of them, to put it very mildly, have also become party to tendencies that have no place in society or religion. It is, at the end of the day, for the state to put its foot down and ensure that justice is not just done, but also seen to be done. Anything less would mean that those who roam the halls of power did not deserve to votes that got them there. *