In Raiwind, Lahore, two brothers were beaten to death in public after a quarrel over just thirty rupees. The cruelty of the killing is troubling, and the manner of it has sent shockwaves across the country.
A prolonged beating, captured on video, unfolded as dozens of bystanders looked on. This was not a blasphemy mob or sectarian frenzy where people fear for their own safety before intervening.
It was ordinary Pakistanis turning a petty argument into lethal punishment. That should unsettle us far more than any hollow slogan about “law and order.”
Pakistan’s problem is not confined to ideological extremism; it is also a deep-seated readiness to resort to everyday violence. According to the Punjab Police’s 2023 report, more than 4,000 people were murdered in the province last year, many killed in street quarrels, family disputes, or land disagreements.
The Raiwind killings are part of a wider pattern in which minor conflicts over money, traffic accidents, or neighbourhood rivalries escalate into murder. When conflict resolution fails at every level–from the classroom to the police station–the cost is measured in human lives.
Our institutions carry heavy responsibility for this breakdown. The police are rarely trusted to defuse disputes. Their reputation for arriving late or acting selectively has left citizens to “settle” matters themselves, often violently. Courts, moving at a glacial pace, offer so little deterrence that perpetrators feel emboldened to act in broad daylight. Education has not filled the vacuum either. School curricula continue to stress obedience and identity politics while neglecting empathy, civic responsibility, and non-violent ways of resolving disagreements. That dozens watched two men being beaten to death, yet no one intervened, reflects a society conditioned to see violence as routine and to expect no support if one dares to step in. Filming with phones has replaced the duty to protect fellow citizens.
It goes without saying how this crisis demands more than condemnation. The Punjab government must ensure any and all perpetrators are swiftly tried and sentenced rather than lost in the backlog of cases. Police reforms should focus on conflict-management training and accountability for officers who fail to act. Civic education should, on an immediate basis, be integrated into school curricula to instil respect for life and the tools of peaceful dispute resolution.
Two men died over thirty rupees, yet the deeper loss is of public trust and social restraint. If Pakistan cannot prevent killings born of petty arguments, then all talk of combating extremism or improving governance rings hollow.
