ON Sept 26, alleged drug dealer Anmol alias Pinky and her alleged accomplice Sameer were indicted in a narcotics case registered in 2021. This followed Pinky’s acquittal in three other narcotics cases over the summer. She remains in jail, facing several other cases.

Ever since she was arrested in May of this year, Pinky’s case has garnered a ton of media attention; purported voice recordings in which she taunts police over their inability to catch her, and the branding on her alleged product, ‘Queen Medam Pinky’ and ‘Naam hi kafi hai’, have all the ingredients of a gangster movie. Except, of course, that there is a ‘godmother’ at the centre of it all.

What then to make of a woman who appears to have made a name for herself in the male dominated gangster world? As a weekly columnist for over a decade, I’ve written regularly about Pakistani women. I’ve written about innumerable cases in which women are beaten down by the system, by men, by in-laws, by their own male relatives, by the economy and by all the forces that coalesce to keep women ‘in their place’. Often, these columns are obituaries. Just two weeks ago, for instance, I wrote about a nine-year-old girl from........

© Dawn