In Pakistan, death does not always carry the same political weight. Some deaths become national events. They bring officials to the family home, statements from political parties, funerals attended by hundreds and promises that the killers will be found. Other deaths are absorbed almost immediately into the ordinary news of the day.

A person is shot, a case is registered, an arrest is made and, by the following morning, there is another body, another headline, another family waiting for an answer. The difference is not always the brutality of the killing. Often, it is the position of the person who has been killed.

This is not a new condition, but the violence of the past several months has made it difficult to ignore. Pakistan has continued to record deaths arising from terrorism, targeted attacks, family disputes, so-called honour killings, street crime, land conflicts and encounters with police under separate headlines and through separate official accounts. In that separation lies part of the problem. We know the incidents. We do not seem to see the pattern.

The dead have become incidents before their deaths have had time to become a public question.

The question becomes clearer when individual cases are viewed not as isolated crimes, but as part of the wider system that determines which deaths remain visible and which quickly recede. The killing of Khalida Chandio is one such case.

Some killings become national causes, while others disappear into crime statistics and the routine news cycle. What does it say about a society when the consequences of death depend on who has died?

Some killings become national causes, while others disappear into crime statistics and the routine news cycle. What does it say about a society when the consequences of death depend on who has died?

In July 2026, the killing of 20-year-old Khalida Chandio in Sindh brought renewed attention to the violence carried out in the name of honour. She was reportedly accused of being a kari, a woman deemed to have brought ‘dishonour’ upon her family by a local jirga [assembly of elders], and killed after a tribal elder allegedly ordered her death.

Khalida’s case became visible because a video of the murder circulated publicly. Yet the larger reality is far less visible. Human rights organisations recorded 470 so-called honour killings in Pakistan in 2025, including 126 in Sindh. At the same time, rights workers have repeatedly warned that such figures are likely to be incomplete because many cases never enter the formal system.

The number is important, but its political significance lies in what happens to each case after it is counted. A murder may enter the police record without ever entering the country’s memory. The law may recognise a crime while the surrounding social order continues to provide reasons for excusing it.

In cases involving women, the language itself often shifts responsibility towards the victim: what she did, where she went, whom she met, whether she had brought dishonour upon the family. The person who was killed then becomes the subject of scrutiny.

This is one of the ways violence survives. It does not always need to openly defeat the law. Sometimes it only needs the law to arrive late, or society to become accustomed to what has happened.

The same........

© Dawn (Magazines)