Daily Times

Remember when the headless corpse of Noor Muqaddam discovered in an upscale neighbourhood of Islamabad took the nation by storm? The grisly murder was painted a tad more terrifying with a splash of blood-freezing strokes on Tuesday when transcripts of CCTV footage were submitted before the court.

Noor’s societal status and the wealth of her family could not stop her from becoming a dreaded statistic in the long, long list of those consumed by the harrowing gender terrorism spreading its tentacles far and wide. However, the fact that her father is leaving no stone unturned to see the accused pay for his brutal crime cannot be ignored in ascertaining the quick work by law enforcement agencies. The investigation seems to be done with and the court proceedings have started. But whether the investigation team has delivered a sure-fire bullet to the prosecutor’s desk remains a shoddy prospect. After all, our forensic capabilities (read, lack of) need no footnotes. No matter what the writing on the wall may be, it is not an open-and-shut case until the judge says so. For starters, an incomplete challan was submitted by the capital police sans any cybercrime report or toxicology findings.

As has been spelt loud and clear by trending social media hashtags and numerous vigils and marches around the word, stakes could not be much higher. Therefore, Jaffar’s mother securing bail despite her unambiguous role in the latest instalment in what has become a roaring femicide series has raised many an eyebrow.

#JusticeforNoorMuqaddam is, indeed, a watershed moment to put an end to pervasive impunity for violence against women. However, to finally see the sun shining on our second-class citizens, state prosecutors need to phenomenally up their game. No loophole is to be tolerated. No clout need be feared. And most importantly, no sweetener should be enticing enough to derail the court proceedings. Our criminal justice system has to crack the code this time with foolproof evidence and watertight witnesses to get an exemplary conviction. Or else, we would simply see an unfortunate rerun of Khadija Siddiqui’s stabbing case.

With PM Khan calling for justice to be served and women parliamentarians stepping above party lines to wave the red flag, the government could not raise a higher banner. Sadly, Kasur’s Zainab case is an irrefutable example of how demanding a public execution is a least effective route. But that is another debate for another day. *