The acid attack on a woman doctor inside Quetta’s Civil Hospital should not be allowed to end with the convenient disgrace of one alleged assailant. It should hang around the neck of a society that is only bothered about women’s security after their bodies have been broken.
The doctor suffered severe burns to her face, chest, legs and other parts of her body, with hospital sources saying nearly 70 per cent of her body was affected. The alleged attacker was reportedly an employee of the same hospital. She was first treated in Quetta, then moved to a private hospital, while arrangements were made to transfer her to Karachi by air ambulance.
Since a hospital is not an open street and has gates, guards, duty rosters and staff records, the fact that an employee could allegedly bring or access acid and use it against a woman doctor on duty speaks not only to individual savagery but criminal negligence of the system.
Was there any prior complaint? Were there threats? Was harassment ignored as a private matter? How was acid obtained? What did hospital security know? What did the administration fail to ask until it was too late? These questions cannot be buried under ministerial condemnation. The suspect’s death in what police describe as an encounter makes these questions more urgent, not less. Many will call it swift justice. It is no such thing. An encounter may end a pursuit, but it cannot establish motive, test evidence, expose accomplices, examine institutional negligence or place facts on the judicial record. In cases of violence against women, the state has often found it easier to stage decisiveness than to do the slower work of justice.
Pakistan has laws against acid crimes. Section 336-B of the Penal Code provides severe punishment for injury caused by corrosive substances, including long imprisonment and heavy fines. Yet the existence of law has not made women safe.
Acid remains too accessible, and survivors, too often abandoned after the first wave of outrage. Official figures placed before parliament recorded 127 acid attack cases between 2021 and 2024, within more than 173,000 reported cases of violence against women. The real number is almost certainly higher, hidden by fear, family pressure and social stigma.
Acid violence is not merely assault. It is an attempt to destroy a woman’s face, work, and confidence. It is punishment by disfigurement. That is why justice in this case cannot be reduced to the killing of the suspect or the issuing of statements by the Balochistan government. *