Domestic violence and physical abuse in Pakistani marriages have become alarmingly common. It does not only happen in underprivileged or uneducated households. It is also frequent among educated families, where men abuse and even kill their wives. A recent incident that shook Pakistan was the murder of Hina Javed—a 45-year-old, highly educated professional who was beaten to death by her husband, a university professor. This tragedy sparked a huge debate on social media, prompting creators to post daily podcasts on domestic abuse awareness and how victims can escape it.
Recently, Pakistani actor Khaqan Shahnawaz hosted a podcast with Ayesha Omar. In the podcast, he revealed witnessing women’s mistreatment firsthand.
Khaqan Shahnawaz said, “A few days ago, I was standing on my balcony. There is a park in front of our house. The part of the park that is connected to my house is desolate, as no one uses it, and there is no maintenance. So, what I saw was two people moving under the tree. It was suspicious, so I opened my phone camera and zoomed in. What I saw was that there was a man beating his wife with sticks. I started recording it. I had to record it as proof. I closed the camera and informed 15. I told the operators about my location. They asked me for the information of the police station. The police didn’t come, but what I saw was that he started beating her. Then they started hugging each other, and then they started eating together. It was like a picnic going on. The kid was playing. I stood for 50 minutes and recorded from different instances. I have videos of all this. I didn’t get a response from 15 while I was seeing all this. Then I got a call back from 15 that they had arrived at the location. I took them to the couple. The wife started calling me out for complaining about her husband and started bashing me, saying that I wanted to separate them. I was so shocked. I thought, what if the police would arrive and I got embarrassed because the woman totally denied what was happening to her? And what if the police imprisoned her husband on fake charges? It got on my nerves. I was so shocked till date. Watch here:”
