Her father promised her to buy a new doll just as beautiful and pretty as she was along with so many other toys as her father would return from Umrah journey. Similarly, this little angel named Zainab also promised to be well mannered under the guardianship of her uncles and aunts. This incident took place when she went to her last tuition class and never came alive. Suddenly, this horrific incident not only changed the life of Zainab’s family but also gave a wakeup call to numerous people in the society. Will the justice be given to the family of Zainab or will it be another example of so many incidents took place before without proper conclusions, only time will answer this burning question. This incident again unearths those regularly ignored areas including the performance of the Police Department, loss of confidence on public office bearers and irresponsible role of Pakistani Media in covering similar incidents repeatedly and the awareness of our society.
The immediate outbreak of the public protest from the neighborhood has actually become a norm in our society when such incidents happen. The authorities usually hold several hours of negotiations with protestors with cosmetic promises of giving justice to the affectees but all in vain. The core reason, behind the sudden outbreak and holding the law in hand, is that people no longer have confidence in Government and other relevant civilian departments. There is a huge question mark on the performance of concerned departments. The father of fallen angel addressed the top leadership of Judiciary and Military to do justice and having no hope from the civil leadership is what must be considered as an ultimate alarm for civil leadership and bureaucracy.
Media has always been considered as the fifth pillar of any state. There is a rat race of “TRP” and “Breaking the News First” which has crossed the ultimate boundary of morality, ethics and the norms of journalism. There is a general consensus of not showing the pictures of affectees and their immediate family members on media around the world but in recent years the local electronic media times and times again prove this fact that they know nothing about the basic principles of reporting. For the past few days, many channels continued to show horrific footages during day times when major viewers are women and children. Similarly, many channels even crossed the limits and started a speculative discussion of how this specific incident could have taken place and how many culprits would have been involved in this assault. Furthermore, media has also started a media trial of suspected people and relevant authorities further create public pressure and outcry in this hot heated incident. These types of discussions on national media should not be encouraged and PEMRA should implement its do’s and don’ts for these channels.
Media should show some responsibility and educates the people so that they don’t get emotional and wait for the relevant authorities to act and do their duties. Additionally, our very own media should also give awareness about how to avoid such circumstances of physical assaults both on children and women.
There is a big responsibility on our society as far as such incidents are concerned. There was a huge outcry of our people when a similar physical assault of 240 children unearthed in the same city of Zainab in 2015. Why such incidents have become consistent in our society and what went wrong with the part of the responsibilities of our parents, elders, and neighbors. There used to be a check and balance in the small movements of our children within the family and around the neighborhood. There usually was some elder uncle ( Haji Sahab or Dada) in every neighborhood of our society who used to take care of children playing in the streets of the neighborhood. If any stranger enters their neighborhood people asked his whereabouts and purpose of coming in their neighborhood. The gradual declining of the morality has become a major issue in our society. The society has become more deaf and blind towards these irregularities.
We as a nation must stand united against these types of evils instead of pointing fingers at others. We further have to analyze as for why these issues keep repeating with furious intensities and why we always give a weaker response as a society. Our society needs to wake up now because there are many Zainabs vulnerable to the brutal animals moving freely in our society. There should be some concrete and fool-proof measures need to be taken instead of tall claims from public office holders. CCTV with face detections technology should be installed in the vulnerable vicinity of the cities. Law and order must be fully implemented across the board without considering the sacred cows and favoritism. The process of giving timely justices is what our people are looking for. This incident shows that the frustration among the masses is very high and if our relevant authorities would not be able to perform then these masses would take law and order in their hand and do their brand of justice wherever they deem to find it right.
