The Guardian
·Jul 2026
‘If a woman is killed, they say she fell, she took poison’: Pakistan’s devastating rise in ‘hidden’ sexual violence
A surge in concealed sexual and domestic violence cases across Pakistan is highlighted through recent murders, acid attacks, and rapes. Karachi’s chief police surgeon, Dr Summaiya Syed-Tariq, warns that growing societal tolerance for violence and the widespread misreporting or concealment of women’s deaths obscure the true scale of abuse. Families frequently block postmortems, impeding investigations, while survivors, especially of marital rape, face disbelief from medical, legal, and judicial systems. Tariq calls for improved documentation and is working to establish Pakistan’s first femicide observatory. She links these crimes to broader social normalisation of aggression and stresses that victims come from all social backgrounds, emphasising the need for a societal shift toward believing women.