The Farrukh Chaudhry murder case in Islamabad is apparently
a serious murder, but if we go to the bottom of the case, a terrible truth
comes to light that raises questions about our entire justice system, the
efficiency of the police and the influence of the powerful class.
Today, there is only one name on everyone’s lips, “the
killer girl”, but no one is asking why a national-level badminton player, a
young girl from a Swati family, Mahnoor Shahid, reached this point? Who were
the people who made her life hell? And what were the institutions that turned a
blind eye despite hearing her constant cries for help?
This was not a sudden incident. Before this tragedy, Mahnoor
Shahid had filed not one, not two, but three FIRs in different police stations
of Islamabad. In every FIR, she kept screaming that she was being harassed,
threatened, tortured, her honor and life were in danger, but the police
remained a silent spectator every time.
If action had been taken on these initial complaints,
perhaps Farrukh Chaudhry would be alive today, Mahnoor would not be behind bars
and many families would have been saved from destruction.
Mahnoor Shahid took the stand in her first FIR that Ahsan
Ahmed Butta had made a fake marriage certificate and forcibly kept her with
him. She alleged that Ahsan Butta, Kashf Shah and Farrukh Chaudhry constantly
followed her, came in government vehicles and threatened her, brandished
weapons outside the house, took pictures and videos and defamed her. She
clearly told the police that she and her family were being threatened with
death. She also wrote that if anything happened to her family, these people
would be responsible.
Mah Noor said that at one point, her mobile phones were
snatched away at the F-11 center, the data was deleted, the phone was broken,
but when she called 15 for help, the police did nothing but take formal action.
Even the CCTV footage of the incident was not provided to her. The question is,
why? Under whose pressure was a girl deprived of justice?
In another FIR, Mah Noor said that she was stopped on the
road, beaten up and hit by a car. In her injured state, she called 15 again,
but the police did not come. She herself went to PIMS Hospital, got medical
treatment and then reached the police station herself and registered a case. A
girl who was repeatedly knocking on the door of the law, why was her voice not
heard?
The most sad thing is that Mah Noor even wrote in her
petitions that “we have been forced to commit suicide, our lives should be made
easier”. When a girl is forced to write these words in front of law enforcement
agencies, there can be no greater failure of any state system. But for the
police, perhaps this was just another piece of paper, another application,
another file.
Mahnoor also alleged that she was raped and tortured through
fake marriage and that the accused were not arrested due to the influence of
powerful people. She even got the number plates of government vehicles recorded
in the FIR(GAB-756, GAS-588 and RJ-40) . The question is, who owned those government
vehicles? In the name of which officers or influential people? Who were the
people who were using government resources to harass a girl day and night?
The performance of the police in this entire matter seems
most shameful. On the one hand, a girl kept on complaining about the threat to
her life, on the other hand, the police remained silent. If serious action had
been taken on the first FIR, if the accused had been arrested, if the victim
girl had been provided with protection, then perhaps this would not have come
to this point. But here, the law proved to be weak as always in the face of
powerful people.
Today, Mahnoor Shahid is being called a murderer, but who
will see the fear, pressure, harassment, violence and constant ignored cries
behind it? A girl who was repeatedly asking for help, finally reached a point
where she gave up hope in the law. This is not just a murder case, but a story
of the failure of the system where the victim becomes a criminal while
demanding justice.
This case is not just about Mahnoor Shahid or Farrukh
Chaudhry, but about the entire society where the police are often seen standing
with the powerful and the cries of the weak are buried in files. If even today,
those police officers, influential people and all the characters who did not
take this girl’s complaints seriously are not held accountable, then tomorrow
another Mahnoor will continue to demand justice in the same way and another
tragedy will be born.
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