IN a 2021 documentary by Al Jazeera about his daughter’s death, Zainab’s father Amin Ansari says he wants to make Kasur a safe place so that no parent has to endure what he did. In 2018, his seven-year-old daughter went missing from her home in Kasur. Her body was found in the trash five days later. Her murderer, Imran, was caught and charged with the rape and murder of her and seven other children. Amin points to the cameras in the alleys to show how Kasur will become a safe city where children will once again feel safe while playing outside.

The cameras haven’t made Kasur, or any other city in the country, safe. But, they did capture a recent assault on a young girl, which led to the nabbing of the perpetrator. As seems to be the norm, first the video went viral on social media. We see a girl riding a bicycle in a neighbourhood alley when a man walks towards her. Like a horror film, you know something terrible is going to happen to her; he leans over to grab and molest her. He runs off but you watch her wipe her mouth before running home, ostensibly. It makes you want to rip your heart out.

On the day I sat down to write about the epidemic of........

© Dawn