ABSTRACT
On 6 April 1999, Samia Sarwar, a twenty-nine-year-old woman, was shot dead by a man hired by her own family in her lawyer’s office located in a bustling business district of Lahore, Pakistan. Why was she so callously summarily executed, in public, in broad daylight? Married off to her cousin as a seventeenyear-old, in a match arranged by her family, Samia had been seeking a divorce from her husband after enduring years of abuse and domestic violence by him.2
Having failed to get the divorce through family deliberations, she had sought help from the law firm AGHS, and taken refuge in the AGHS-run women’s shelter, Dastak.3 While staying at the shelter, Samia, fearing for her life, had refused to meet with male relatives but had reluctantly agreed to a meeting with her mother (who was allegedly going to hand over papers needed for the divorce) at the office of her lawyer, Hina Jilani.4 Samia’s mother had arrived at Jilani’s office accompanied by her brother and a driver. The lawyer asked the men to leave the room but Samia’s mother objected, averring that she could not walk and needed the driver’s assistance.5 In the next moment, the driver pulled out a gun and shot at both Samia and her lawyer. While Samia died instantly, Hina Jilani narrowly escaped injury. Samia’s family believed that by seeking a divorce Samia had brought shame
and dishonour to the family and that such a brazen act of defiance called for punitive action in order to restore the family name and honour.6 It can be argued that the fact that the killing was carried out so overtly denotes that the ‘perpetrators were convinced they were doing the right thing, were not afraid of publicity’ and felt no need to hide their identity, as they felt sure that they could count on widespread support and that the state would not hold them to account.7 In light of the events that followed, it seems that the perpetrators were not wrong in their belief.
