Women Folks

THE twists in the case of Farzana who was bludgeoned to death outside the Lahore High Court increasingly feel like film noir. Her husband killed his first wife and was forgiven by his son. She was killed by her relatives, who had earlier killed her other sister and were forgiven by her son. Money involved, compromises involved, betrayals involved, moral questions involved, and now, belatedly, outrage involved. The act of Farzana’s murder was met with shock based on three perceived aberrations. First, the instruments of death were bricks, evoking the image of the medieval punishment of stoning to death for adultery. The second was that it happened just outside the premises of a court — the place for dispensation of justice, presumably a secure zone. And the third is there were witnesses who did not try to prevent the crime. Barring these, it was just another routine honour killing that we now take in our stride. However, all three are not aberrations. There are four p