ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that protecting women required not only a shift in social attitudes, but also the investigation and adjudication of domestic violence casesthrough a gender-sensitive lens.
‘To effectively combat violence against women, the provincial governments must ensure that police officers receive appropriate training aimed at recognising and overcoming gender and patriarchal biases,’ observed Justice Muhammad Hashim Khan Kakkar in a 10-page judgement he authored regarding domestic homicide.
In domestic homicide, the tragedy is not only that a woman may be killed behind closed doors, it is that the doors may close upon the truth as well, Justice Kakkar bemoaned, adding it was the job ofthe legal system to extract truth behind them.
Justice Kakkar was heading a two-judge SC bench also consisting of Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim that had taken up a jail appeal of Habib Ullah, challenging the Nov 29, 2022 Sindh High Court (SHC) rejection of his plea. The appellant was convicted of murdering his wife, Ageela Bibi, in Karachi in 2011.
The SC, however, upheld life sentence and a fine of Rs500,000 awarded to the appellant as compensation to the legal heirs of the deceased. Justice Kakkar emphasised that law-enforcement agencies must adopt a genuinely gender-sensitive approach to investigation, ensuring that every available piece of evidence was identihed, preserved and brought on record.
The privacy of the matrimonial home, he said, must not become a shield behind which perpetrators could evade accountability. Any investigating officer whose negligence or casual approach resulted in a lapse must be held accountable.
He explained that certain offences fell into a specialcategory in jurisprudence known as ‘crimes of difficult proof’.
These included crimes that occurred frequently but were difficult to establish.
Cases involving domestic violence also fell within this category, including the murder of a wife within the private confines of her matrimonial home, Justice Kakkar observed. Such crimes were difficult to prove because they occurred inside closed structures where perpetrators had physical control over the environment and could destroy evidence.
Since such acts generally occurred in private, the people present were usually the victim, perpetrator and, sometimes, minor children or close family members.
As the perpetrator and other occupants were often close relatives, they were unlikely to come forward or testify against him. This was particularly truewhen the victim was a daughter-in-law, Justice Kakkar regretted.
The absence of primary evidence consequently made such crimes difficult for the prosecution to prove, he noted.
A married woman ordinarily lives in her husband’s family home, where she may be dependent on and surrounded by her husband and in-laws. In South Asia, where domestic violence against wives remains prevalent, lethal violence may occur within the confines of the matrimonial home, placing the victim in a highly vulnerable position and giving perpetrators greater opportunitytoconceal the circumstances of her death by portraying a homicide as an accident or suicide, the judgement said.
If such cases were dealt with under traditional criminal procedures and conventional evidentiary standards, the judgement warned, such offences could go unpunished.
The judgement also expressed grave concern over a disturbing trend in cases involving violence against women. After taking a woman’s life, a perpetrator often attempts to assassinate her character to justify the crime, it observed.
More troublingly, the judgement observed, such prejudice could enter the criminal justice system itself, with the circumstances of a woman’s death not receiving the seriousness and care warranted during investigation as though her life were of lesser value.