The Sindh High Court has directed police to provide necessary protection to the life, honour and property of a newlywed couple who married of their own free will. The woman’s family, according to the petition, opposed the marriage and threatened the couple, while an FIR has already been registered in Umerkot. The investigating officer has recorded Sania’s statement and must place this report before the magistrate. The case comes only months after two other free-will couples in Sindh and Karachi were attacked after appearing before courts to affirm that their marriages were voluntary.
In May, Nadia Aslam and Najeeullah Aziz were shot dead in Karachi soon after Nadia told a Malir court that she had married voluntarily. In August, 18-year-old Fatima Zehra was killed and her husband critically wounded after appearing before a Thatta court where she too had affirmed that the marriage was of her own choice.
The law allows an adult Muslim woman to marry without the consent of a wali, or guardian. Pakistan’s superior courts settled that principle more than two decades ago. The trouble begins when that legal autonomy collides with family authority, and the woman’s choice is treated as something to be reversed rather than respected.
Families capable of violence often know the woman’s routines, relatives, workplace and likely movements. Police protection therefore has to extend beyond the courtroom. Credible threats should trigger risk assessment, coordination across jurisdictions, emergency contacts and follow-up. Protection cannot disappear at the boundary of one police station. Nor should a woman seeking safety be confined indefinitely in a shelter against her wishes. Safety that comes at the cost of her liberty simply replaces one form of control with another.
Sahil documented 3,172 cases of gender-based violence in the first six months of 2026, including 644 murders and 132 so-called honour killings. More than half of the reported incidents occurred inside victims’ homes. In such cases, the home cannot automatically be treated as the place to which a woman should be returned.
The language of “honour” also obscures what many of these crimes are really enforcing. That in 2026, an adult woman can still be made to answer for whom she marries and the choices she makes is a sombre reflection on how far our society still has to travel.
