The Language of Justice and the Lives of Women |
Late at night, behind the closed door of a home in Peshawar, a young doctor sat bruised, anxious, and silent, unsure of how much more she could endure before someone believed her. Her bruises were real, but even more real was the loneliness of being unheard. It is a familiar story for many women in Pakistan, violence suffered in private, doubted in public, and dismissed in court.
There are moments in judicial history that do not merely resolve a case but unsettle language itself and leave space for social transformation. The recent Supreme Court judgment authored by Justice Ayesha A. Malik in Dr. Seema Hanif Khan v. Waqas Khan is one such moment. It is not simply a legal verdict, it is a confrontation with a social structure that has long demanded women remain silent, blindly obedient, and endlessly sacrificial.
The case itself was straightforward. A woman sought dissolution of marriage due to cruelty, non-payment of maintenance, and her husband’s unlawful second marriage. Yet at every stage, her experience was dismissed. Three different courts labeled her “disobedient,” deprived her of her dower, and forced her into a khula she never requested. The Supreme Court, however, chose to listen not to stereotypes, but to the lived reality of a woman repeatedly denied dignity.
One of the most revolutionary contributions of the judgment is its redefinition of cruelty. For decades, family courts have confined cruelty to what is visible, broken bones, FIRs, and medical reports. Humiliation,........