This is the sentence that protects every abuser in Pakistan

Sana stood outside the gates of the police station with her young son, clutching her hand as she trembled from fear of what people would say if she went inside.

The 26-year-old had been subjected to four years of physical, emotional and financial violence at home, and now her husband was threatening to leak their private videos. What held her back was not fear of her abuser but a sentence she had heard her whole life: Sharif larkiyaan thaney nahi jaati. Good girls don’t go to police stations.

At our gate, Sana was not just dealing with her husband’s violence but also battling a deeper, more systemic violence in the shape of a belief system that decided how far she was allowed to seek justice.

This story is not an isolated one. I often hear it as a Sub-Divisional Police Officer serving with the Sindh Police. Each complainant who happens to be a woman or her family apologises to me: “We come from a respectable family. We have never stepped inside a police station.” This disclaimer signals that the act of going to the police needs to be justified.

When women say it, the police station ceases to operate as an institutional space where you can report a crime, and it morphs into a dangerous site where you imperil your social identity. There is a striking pattern to this pre-emptive stigma neutralisation. The disclaimer is the same no matter what the crime. It is given when a woman’s husband breaks her arm at home in Larkana, she is raped by her employer in Landhi, threatened by her own uncles in Mirpurkhas, and even when she loses her life savings to some scammer bro sitting in Ratodero with a 5G connection.

The subtext is always the same: If you do go to a police station, you will no longer be considered respectable. This is classic patriarchal control over a woman’s mobility and voice. A sharif aurat is constructed around notions of modesty, obedience and invisibility in public spaces. At the same time, police stations in Pakistan have been historically associated with male domination and crime. But the result is that women are left to endure injustice rather than encouraged to seek a remedy.

This barrier flies in the face of guarantees enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan that all citizens are equal under the law and deserve its protection. The message should be that a woman going to a police station is not compromising on her dignity but exercising a fundamental right.

The persistence of this stigma is dangerous given the magnitude of violence that is widespread and under-reported. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and Aurat Foundation provide some sense of what is out there, but so many cases are never reported or withdrawn because of the thana stigma.

Recently, a young woman walked into a police station with her brother, seeking help for repeated physical violence by her husband. She spoke in fragments at first, hesitant, almost apologetic, describing the abuse she had been enduring. There were signs of fear, but also urgency. Before she could explain her situation, her brother interrupted. He dismissed the severity of the situation with a practised calm. They did not want to pursue legal action and instead asked if they could do something else.

“Bas usse bula ke police wali zuban mein samjha den ke theek se rahen.” Just call the husband and tell him to straighten out in the language of the law. In that moment, the woman’s plea for safety was reframed into a demand for adjustment.

What stood out was not just the violence she had faced, but the boundary her family had already drawn around justice.

Legally, the option to proceed was clear. Under the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act and provisions of the Pakistan Penal Code, physical assault and abuse are crimes serious enough that police can arrest the person accused of them and investigate (cognisable offences). The State sees such violence as a crime, and not as a private matter, but in reality, the law often arrives second after family negotiations are held, social calculations are made, and reputational concerns weighed up.

Forty-two Women and Children Protection Cells (WCPCs) have been opened in all ranges and districts of Sindh to make reporting a crime easier (See list of officers, locations and contact numbers below). You can use the WCPC app, Zainab Alert, 1917 or IG Complaint Cell as well. But none of these diminish a physical police station as the most immediate point of access to justice.

The WCPCs have contributed to a noticeable increase in crime reporting, especially for domestic violence, harassment and child abuse, by providing a relatively more sensitive and less intimidating environment staffed by female officers. For instance, the call centre 1715 WCPC from January 1, 2025, to November 2025 received ~82,570 complaints online alone, mostly domestic violence and harassment, which were catered to accordingly. One woman was brought to a police station after making a call to 15. Her husband had thrown hot tea at her face because he claimed she had served him in old utensils. He was immediately arrested.

In that moment, the law was clear, and the institutional response was immediate, but what followed was more revealing than the crime itself. As proceedings began, the woman pleaded, “Please release my husband. He won’t do it again. Just make him understand.” The same system she had called on for help was now being asked to retreat. No wonder she was back again after a month, this time with a graver assault.

Discouraging women from going to police stations does not protect dignity. It protects the perpetrators. Cycles of violence grind on when victims or survivors are dissuaded from resorting to state institutions for support. For many women, fear of social judgement outweighs the promise of legal protection. I see women pleading for a settlement with their husbands and trying to convince them not to be violent towards them, without taking any legal action. Their only concern is to keep the family reputation intact.

They reveal that the barrier is not always access to the system; sometimes it is the conditioned belief that using it fully will cost more than enduring the violence. Families concerned about their social standing discourage the reporting of a crime even in serious abuse cases. But in doing so, they normalise a culture of silence. The media has not helped by loading with controversy a woman’s presence in a police station. This framing is being challenged, but much work remains to be done.

A notion that needs to spread to all parts of society is that a police station is not a place of dishonour. It is a public institution meant to serve citizens, and a woman who walks into a thana is not stepping outside her respectability but asserting her rights.

Meanwhile, change is being driven forward in the attitude of police officials toward female victims. Capacity-building sessions are held regularly on handling female complainants, victims of heinous crimes and other vulnerable groups. A front desk officer will pause and think before saying, ‘Aurat ne kuch to kiya hoga,’ as was the case before. (She must have done something). The rise in the number of women police officers is reshaping how women experience the system. It may not dismantle stigma overnight, but it does create an entry point, a space where hesitation softens.

I have often witnessed that shift the moment a woman steps into my office and takes a visible sigh of relief. A woman who had been defrauded by her husband at first was uncertain about proceeding, but as we walked her through the legal channels, something began to change.

With every interaction, she began to appear more assured. The last time she came to see me, her demeanour was entirely different. “Kya hum kabhi bhi aapke office aaskte hain baghair kisi rukawat ke?” she asked me. Can we come to your office without any problems? For many women, access to justice is not assumed; it is negotiated; it is uncertain and sometimes dependent on who sits on the other side of the table.

Police departments must continue to ensure professionalism, confidentiality and dignity in handling complaints. This will only be possible when the basic unit of the police station is made stronger. Women are taking up key positions and ranks. Encouraging women to report violence is not a threat to social values; it is a reinforcement of the rule of law.

Sharif aurat thaney nahi jaati is not merely outdated, it is also exclusionary. While the feminisation of policing has begun to transform the thana, the greater challenge lies in transforming the mindset that keeps women away from it.