September 7, 2026
By Rehan Piracha
LAHORE
The Senate Standing Committee on Interior has approved a bill to enhance the punishment for acid attacks from life imprisonment to death, but women’s rights activists and legal experts say the move misses the point — arguing that survivors need certainty of punishment and access to rehabilitation, not merely a harsher penalty on paper.
The committee, chaired by Senator Faisal Saleem Rehman, cleared the bill at a meeting at Parliament House in Islamabad on September 8. The Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, moved by Senator Muhammad Abdul Qadir, seeks to amend Section 336-B of the Pakistan Penal Code, which deals with hurt caused by corrosive substances.
Citing the recent acid attack on a woman doctor in Quetta, the bill’s authors argue that despite a 2011 amendment, such attacks continue to cause lifelong disfigurement and trauma. It proposes death, life imprisonment, or a minimum of fourteen years’ imprisonment along with a fine of two million rupees, intended as a stronger deterrent.
‘Not about further punishment’
Reacting to the committee’s approval, several activists said the emphasis on capital punishment is misplaced.
Nida Aly, executive director of the AGHS Legal Aid Cell, said research does not support the idea that harsher penalties alone deter crime. “The criminal justice system therefore needs meaningful reforms to address the procedural and institutional loopholes that undermine accountability in such cases,” she told Voicepk.
“Ensuring that perpetrators are consistently and effectively held accountable is a far stronger deterrent than securing only a few convictions through harsher penalties.”
Aly added that capital cases carry heightened evidentiary requirements, which can make convictions harder to secure — particularly given the barriers survivors already face in reporting and pursuing such cases.
“The focus should therefore be on strengthening investigation and prosecution, ensuring accountability, regulating the availability and sale of corrosive chemicals, providing rehabilitation and support to survivors, and ensuring effective reparations for victims and survivors,” she said. “We need a holistic, rights-based approach to addressing all forms of violence against women, rather than relying on the severity of punishment as a substitute for an effective criminal justice response.”
Activist Valerie Khan was more direct in her opposition.
“This is not about further punishment, it’s about certainty of punishment and it’s about prevention of acid attacks,” she said, arguing that the death penalty “is not going to solve the problem” and could in fact work against Pakistan’s own interests by jeopardising its GSP+ trade status with the European Union, which requires limiting capital punishment to only the most serious crimes.
Khan called instead for a preventative strategy backed by consistent law enforcement, a broader shift in the state’s narrative, and community-level investment to foster gender equality, in collaboration with civil society organisations.
She described the bill as a draft “simply not informed by practitioners and experts on the field,” and said she hoped lawmakers would take a more informed and realistic approach going forward.
Punishment without prevention
Gul Hassan Abbas, a policy analyst and executive director of the Initiatives for Sustainable Development, said the proposed death penalty raises deeper policy questions that the bill leaves unanswered. “Acid attacks cause lifelong physical, psychological and social trauma, predominantly to women,” he told Voicepk. “Strong punishment is necessary, but it must go hand in hand with prevention, immediate medical care, compensation, rehabilitation, psychological support and economic reintegration of survivors.”
Abbas noted that Pakistan already has more than thirty offences punishable by death, yet violent crime persists — evidence, he said, that severity of punishment is not the primary deterrent.
“The real deterrent is not merely the severity of punishment, but the certainty and swiftness of detection, investigation, prosecution and conviction,” he said, adding that capital punishment demands an especially reliable justice system, since a wrongful conviction cannot be reversed.
He attributed the persistence of acid violence, despite more than a decade of legislation, to a reactive rather than preventive approach.
“Acid attacks must be prevented by regulating the production, licensing, sale, transportation and storage of corrosive substances, alongside early intervention in cases of threats and gender-based violence,” he said. “Our goal should not only be to punish perpetrators after an attack. Our real measure of success should be how many attacks we prevent, how effectively we prosecute offenders, and how successfully we help survivors rebuild their lives with dignity.”
A patchwork of regulation
The activists’ concerns are set against a backdrop of uneven regulation and stalled legislation across the country.
Acid violence was first criminalised through the Criminal Law (Second Amendment) Act, 2011, which added Sections 336-A and 336-B to the Penal Code. Since then, efforts to pass a comprehensive law on treatment, rehabilitation and compensation for survivors have repeatedly stalled in parliament.
The Acid and Burn Crime Act, 2018, lapsed in the Senate after clearing the National Assembly, and a successor bill limited to the Islamabad Capital Territory — the Acid and Burn Crime Bill, 2025 — has sat with the Senate since being transmitted from the National Assembly on August 21, without further action.
Regulation of acid sales also varies sharply by province. Punjab passed the Punjab Acid Control Act in April, though activists say it does not address compensation or support for victims. Sindh has no dedicated law on the subject, relying instead on the broader Sindh Regulation for Storage, Sale and Purchase of Acid Rules, 2022 — a framework seen as less effective in practice.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has no regulatory framework at all. In August, the Peshawar High Court issued notices to the federal and provincial governments after a petition challenged the unmonitored sale of acid and other dangerous chemicals in the province. Dr Sumeera Shams, chairperson of the KP Commission on Status of Women, said a draft law on acid sale regulation and victim rehabilitation has already been forwarded to the Social Welfare Department, while the Peshawar SSP Operations office said no acid attack cases have been reported in the province since 2024.
The bill approved by the Senate committee now awaits further legislative steps before it can become law. For the activists its passage would do little unless accompanied by the reforms, regulation and survivor support they say have been missing for more than a decade.