KARACHl: `They beat me and kept hitting me. I was on the ground. Dawood, my 13-year-old son, ran up to me and lay over me to cover me up with his own body and then they started beating him up too,` said Salma Ruby Bandhani, a social worker from Delhi Colony for whom several rights activists gathered to hold a joint press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Thursday to seek justice for her through the media.

They demanded from the government, police and courts to provide justice to the woman, who was getting death threats and living in hiding while her son missed his school examinations.

Ms Bandhani said that she had been involved in community work in her locality for many years now which had earned her love and respect of the people. But lately a local politically influential person has grown jealous of her popularity. After telling her to stop the work, he along with his accomplices started threatening her after she paid no heed to them and carried on with her welfare work.

`He has opened a karate centre in Delhi Colony and started threatening the people of the area, but I told them not to pay much heed to him. Then last year, he filed a case in court against me saying that he was a good Samaritan and that I was hindering his work, though he couldn`t make any headway after that.

`But things became worse when he contested against me in the local elections and lost to me by 15 votes. That was when his people, including a PTl MPA, asked me to join their party as they felt that the public in our vicinity was with me.

`When I didn`t do that, he and his men started bullying me again. Me and my son were beaten black and blue over a confrontation with them after they cut the water supply to the community centre washrooms used for bathing dead bodies and got illegal connections for themselves,` she said.

`When I approached the police station to lodge an FIR of the attack on me and disgracing me before the public, they didn`t do anything. Instead they filed an FIR from my attackers which resulted in my questioning and being locked up in a police station overnight,` she said.

Retired justice Majida Razvi, chairperson of the Sindh Human Rights Commission, said that after not knowing what to do and where to go, Salma approached Karamat Ali of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, who got her in touch with her.

`It is unjust to first attack a woman the way they did and then it is unjust of the police too to call her to the police station for questioning late at night. It is all against the law,` she said.

`The police, which were [supposed] to protect this woman, turned against her. We want justice for her,` she said.

Nuzhat Shireen, chairperson of the Sindh Commission on the Status of Women, said that Salma`s case was not the only one as there were many women being treated unjustly by people with influence and the police.

The rights activists said that they feared for her life.