December 20, 2025
By Rehan Piracha
LAHORE
After an outrage by women activists including human rights defenders and lawyers on the recent Supreme Court verdict that commuted a rape conviction to a charge of fornication, criticism also comes from government formed bodies. The verdict has sparked considerable controversy with the Special Committee on Anti-Rape and the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) sharply criticising the judgment.
In a statement shared on her X handle on December 20, Ayesha Raza Farooq, Chairperson of the Special Committee on Anti-Rape, said that the committee “expresses serious concern regarding emerging patterns in which rape allegations are converted into findings of consensual intercourse, resulting in convictions under fornication provisions, with the attendant risk, actual or potential, of criminal liability being imputed to the complainant.”
The Anti-Rape Special Committee reiterated that sexual violence constitutes a grave violation of the Constitution, engaging the rights to life, dignity, bodily integrity, and privacy. The state bears a positive obligation to ensure that the criminal justice system responds to such offences in a manner that protects survivors and upholds constitutional guarantees.
Consent as central element
The committee emphasized that under the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2021, the legal framework now centers consent as the defining element of the offence, irrespective of the relationship between the complainant and the accused. Marriage or intimate partnership neither confers immunity from criminal liability nor implies irrevocable or perpetual consent.
The committee further noted that courts have recognised and applied this principle in practice, including by holding husbands criminally liable for rape where the essential elements of the offence are established. These developments reaffirm that sexual violence within marriage is neither legally permissible nor beyond the reach of criminal law.
However, the committee warned that such outcomes “have a chilling effect on reporting, undermine survivor confidence in the justice system, and risk retraumatising victims by transforming complainants into accused persons.”
NCSW raises concerns
Separately, the NCSW noted with concern that the prosecution’s findings—including investigative evidence and judicial conclusions reached by the trial court and the Lahore High Court (LHC)—were effectively disregarded, resulting in the accused being discharged from the offence of rape.
“Such an outcome raises critical questions regarding the adjudication of sexual violence cases and the application of legal standards relating to consent,” the commission stated.
The NCSW highlighted that consent could not be inferred from silence, delayed reporting, or the absence of physical resistance. “Judicial interpretation must remain informed by the complex realities of trauma, fear, coercion, and power asymmetries that frequently underpin sexual violence,” it added.
Call for systemic reform
The NCSW urged the judiciary and all relevant state institutions to ensure that adjudication in cases of sexual violence is firmly grounded in constitutional guarantees of equality, dignity, and non-discrimination, as well as Pakistan’s obligations under international human rights law.
“Gender-responsive interpretation of law and survivor-centred judicial reasoning are imperative to prevent re-victimisation and carrying of justice,” the commission said.
In this context, the NCSW reiterated the need for systemic institutional strengthening, which should include increasing the number of gender-based violence (GBV) courts, enhancing technical capacity and specialisation of GBV court staff, appointment of permanent judges, and conducting large-scale sensitisation trainings for justice sector stakeholders.
Particular emphasis must also be placed on first responders, especially the police, to ensure survivor-sensitive handling of complaints from the outset, the statement concluded.
The Supreme Court of Pakistan had converted a rape conviction of 20 years rigorous imprisonment (RI) under Section 376 (Rape) of the Pakistan Penal Code into five years RI under Section 496-B (fornication – or zina with consent), citing a delay in the registration of the FIR and the absence of marks of violence on the survivor’s body.
The judgment was delivered by a three-member bench comprising Justice Malik Shahzad Ahmad, Justice Aqeel Abbasi, and Justice Salahuddin Panhwar, with a 2-1 majority. Justice Panhwar dissented from the majority view.
Justice Salahuddin Panhwar, the third member of the bench, dissented and voted to dismiss the petition by refusing leave to appeal.
Dissenting note: Survivor should not be penalised for reporting delay
In his dissenting note, Justice Salahuddin Panhwar wrote that rape and sexual harassment cases often went unreported in our society as the victims feared the consequences of reporting.
“The victim often has to justify to [their] own family members about their character at the time when [they] report … such an incident,” he added.
“In the case at hand, the victim is of young age, unmarried, her parents have passed away, she has an elder brother and record also shows evidence of threats forwarded to the victim,” the dissenting note read.
It added that it clearly made sense as to “how reluctant a girl would be in these circumstances to share such an unfortunate occurrence with her own brother”.
Justice Panwhar observed that delays in reporting sexual assaults to police were not fatal to the prosecution.
Defending the absence of healed marks of violence on victim’s body, the dissenting note stated the accused was carrying a weapon. “Any victim would be reluctant to resist such a perpetrator with a weapon in hand.”
The judge observed that a rape victim should not be penalised on “account of ostensible delay in reporting what she has undergone”.
“On the contrary, kindness, encouragement, and understanding are the requirements to approbate a victim’s difficult decision to purge the society of perpetrators of such heinous offences,” he added in his dissenting note.
The case was registered in October 2015, when the rape survivor alleged that the accused, Hassan Khan, had raped her seven months ago, as she had gone out of her house and had reached a forest located nearby. The assault resulted in the survivor becoming pregnant, and later delivering a child. A DNA test subsequently confirmed that the accused was the biological father of the child.
In 2017, the trial court convicted the accused under Section 376 and sentenced him to 20 years RI along with Rs. 500,000 as compensation to the survivor. The Lahore High Court (LHC) upheld the trial court’s verdict.
However, the Supreme Court verdict, authored by Justice Malik Shahzad Ahmad, had stated that the incident “was not a case of forcible rape,” citing the delay in filing the complaint.