JUST days ago, a young woman in Quetta had acid thrown across her face for rejecting a marriage proposal.

In Jhang, another woman was gang-raped and dumped at a hospital like refuse. In Punjab, a husband murdered his wife because she refused him intimacy. These are not isolated horrors. They are three faces of the same epidemic violence against women in Pakistan, a crisis so pervasive and so poorly addressed that women are dying faster than the law can be rewritten to save them.

Pakistan has a legal architecture that, on paper, promises protection. The Acid and Burn Crime Act 2025 criminalizes acid and fire-related violence with strict penalties, including the death penalty if the attack results in death, up to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment for causing injury and makes all offences non-bailable and non-compoundable. It mandates 30-day investigations, 60-day fast-track trials, witness protection, free medical treatment and rehabilitation for survivors, a federal victim compensation fund and an oversight board with a 33 per cent quota for women. It closes loopholes in previous laws like the Pakistan Penal Code sections 332 and 334. The Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Act 2022 established special courts for rape cases and prohibited degrading two-finger tests. Provincial domestic violence laws........

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