I HAVE eight columns left to write this year after this one. I said the last two months should be different. Cheerful maybe. Insightful, at least. Something new. Then Waseem Abbas happened.

He was 15. His father died nine years ago. His mother remarried. A grandfather and an uncle took turns looking after him until they could not. Then they took him to an orphanage in Multan. His grandfather said he wanted the boy to get an education rather than struggle on the streets. That was five years ago.

Waseem wanted to learn electrical worl(. The orphanage sent him to a contractor, Taugeer Nazir, after what it says were inquiries. Media reports say Taugeer had a team of around 40 boys. Six days later, Waseem was dead.

According to the FIR, he ran. He passed residents on a street in a private housing society and told them the men behind him wanted to kill him. A car followed. His head struck a pillar at a gate. His sl(ull was crushed. His cousin says Waseem had often said he did not want to go to the electrician. He wanted to go home. He was buried at 2am in Muzaffargarh. Only close relatives and orphanage officials attended.

Taugeer was arrested at the scene.

Lawyers beat him outside the courtroom, though police were present. A magistrate gave him four days of physical remand.

That night, according to the Crime Control Department, he escaped. By the next morning, he was dead, 1(illed in an exchange of fire near Bahawalpur. His accomplice, the CCD says, got away.

Many of us cheered. I understand why.

A boy was crushed against a gate, and the man accused of doing it is gone. It feels like the scales have been balanced. But I have read this story before. So have you. Arrest, escape, encounter, closure. We know the sequence well enough to recite it. We 1(now what it says about our policing, and about courts that many people no longer trust to deliver. None of this is a secret.

Last year, the Human Rights Commission of Pal(istan counted more than 500 alleged encounters in Punjab since January 2025, with over 670 people 1(illed more than in any other province.

It said the killings had become normal since the CCD was set up in February 2025, and that encounters were standing in for the criminal justice system. The CCD rejected the allegations, saying it worl(s within the law and that hardened criminals often fire first.

The statement made the news for a day.

Then we moved on. Now some of us applaud. Among them was lawmal(er Hina Parvez Butt who tweeted that justice was served immediately. She later deleted itand said it was the feelings of an ordinary citizen. That is precisely the problem.

When an elected representative mistakes the killing of a suspect for justice, what hope is there for the ordinary citizen? So, I have nothing new to say about the encounter, except perhaps this: a trial would have belonged to Waseem. It would have asked questions in public and on the record. Why did a 15-year-old run from the man teaching him a trade? What happened in the six days before? Who is Amjad Ali, the second man named in the FIR, and where is he now? What did the orphanage ask before sending the child away? What happens to the other boys who worked for Taugeer? Those questions now have no courtroom. The case against Taugeer appears to have been closed. The case for Waseem never opened.

Our institutions are often at their most energetic after a funeral. A licence is reviewed in this case the orphanage`s. A statement is posted. A file is closed, some-times with a bullet.

What we rarely build is the dull machinery that would have made the funeral unnecessary.

A register. An inspection. A phone number that a frightened boy could dial.

Most of us reading this are lucky.

When our childrenturn 15, learning a trade means an internship arranged by a family friend. Someone checks on them. If they hate it, they come home and complain at dinner. Nobody chases them down a street. Waseem had a cousin who listened and a grandfather who hoped. What he did not have was a system.

Somewhere this week another boy is being placed with someone to learn a trade. He may be lucl(y. The contractor may be 1(ind. But if he is not, and he runs, who will he run to? I promised myself something hopeful, so here is the most hopeful thing I can find.

An old man in Muzaffargarh took his grandson to an orphanage because he believed there was a better life on the other side of its gate. That belief should not be naive.

How many more Waseems before it isn`t? • The writer is a journalist and conducts writing workshops in Karachi.

X: LedeingLady