Shock and rage has caused Pakistan the case of 18-year-old Aisha, an internal domestic assistant who died after complications of illegal abortion, after having reported that she suffered repeated gang rape by her employer's son and family driver. The young woman ended up in a Lahore hospital in May, while shortly before her death she was able to give a statement to the police describing what, according to her claims, she had suffered.
As quoted in Daily Mail, Aisha worked as a domestic assistant to a wealthy family in Lahore, such as thousands of young women in Pakistan looking for work to support their families financially.
According to court documents invoked by local media, the young woman reportedly experienced for about a year repeated abuse by her employer's son and family driver, whom she accused of multiple rapes.
Last November she found that she was pregnant, with the child allegedly being the fruit of one of the rapes she had reported.
According to her testimony, her employers, seeking to avoid making the case public and protecting the family name, forced her to end the pregnancy. As he argued, they arranged the process in a private clinic.
When the young woman informed her employer’s wife that she had stopped having menstruation, she was subjected to a pregnancy test. When the result came in positive, he claimed that he was forced to take abortion pills.
Her condition deteriorated severely after taking the medicines. She returned home, Faisalabad, to recover, but her health continued to deteriorate.
Her parents moved her to a local clinic, where doctors found that she was still pregnant.
The family contacted her employers, who asked to return to Lahore. There, according to court documents, Aisha, who was now in the fifth month of pregnancy, received threats and was led to surgery. During the procedure it was found that the fetus was already dead.
The 18-year-old never recovered from the complications that followed. She was hospitalized repeatedly the month before her death and eventually ended up on 26 May in a Lahore hospital.
During her hospitalization she recorded videos from the hospital bed, in which she described what she had suffered. The video became widely known last week through social networks and brought the case to the fore.
The two men she named as rapists, as well as her employer, are now being investigated for group rape and homicide. The driver has been detained, while his employer and son have been released on bail.
At the same time, authorities also consider the role of private clinic staff where the surgery took place.
Aisha's father, speaking to BBC Urdu, said he did not know the alleged abuses his daughter had suffered.
"We contacted her by phone and at first she had told us nothing to make us believe she was being raped," she said.
Describing the moment she learned about her pregnancy, she said: “When she returned to Faisalabad and her health condition deteriorated, the doctor at the clinic informed us that our daughter was pregnant. When I heard it, my legs broke. I felt like the sky was falling on me.".
The case has provoked strong reactions in Pakistan, with thousands of social network users calling for the exemplary punishment of those responsible.
"An 18-year-old domestic assistant in Lahore was raped, ignored when she asked for help and later died during abortion. This is a terrible failure of humanity and accountability. Those responsible and those who have ignored must answer," wrote a user.
Another commented: "A domestic assistant named Aisha, just 18 or 19, is no longer in life. Not from a disease. Not by accident. From systematic rape, forced abortion, torture and death threats by her own employer. Aisha deserved protection. He deserved justice. He deserved to live.".
The case has brought to the fore the debate on sexual violence against women in Pakistan, a phenomenon which, according to human rights organisations, remains widespread but is often not denounced due to social stigmatism.
Many women avoid recourse to authorities, fearing social outcry or questioning of their claims, while activists point to timeless problems in police investigations and the judicial system, which often lead to low rates of conviction for sexual violence crimes.
The publication of the case coincided with another development involving Pakistani public opinion. Lahore Court recently rejected the latest appeals by Abid Malhi and Shafkat Ali, who had been sentenced to death for the French gang rape in front of her three children in 2020, on a highway outside Lahore.
The decision was seen by many as an important step in a judicial system that has received strong criticism of how rape cases are managed, low convictions and responsibilities to the victims themselves.