Writing on the Wall

The angels cried for her as she was too innocent and naive to understand that the parrots she just freed would be the cause of her death by torture. Zohra Shah was just an 8-year-old innocent girl when she succumbed to injuries in a local hospital in Rawalpindi. She was brought to the hospital by her killers. Soaked in her blood, the poor angel was unconscious and her entire body turned blue owing to merciless torture and later she died because she was young enough to tolerate the excruciating pain. She committed two crimes i.e. she freed the expensive parrots and she was a poor domestic worker. Her employer had beaten her like a beast. Imagine a minor girl being kicked again and again in her private parts for countless painful minutes for a crime which wasn’t a crime in her eyes. Being herself a captive, she couldn’t see the parrots in the cage sighing for freedom. Zohra Shah, an unpaid domestic worker, was killed in the affluent neighborhood of Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s fourth-largest c

Be careful, you are not immune!  The federal cabinet has approved the most-wanted decision of easing restrictions in the lockdown after May 11. The ease in lockdown brings good news for small business owners like garment/cloth sellers, shoe shop owners, mechanics, and spare parts shop owners. Earlier, we also witnessed that the lockdown was not truly being observed by the general public as they can be seen on the roads and in the grocery shops without following the SoP’s recommended by the government. It was rumored that the government will be forced to open the markets and transport in the coming week. But, unfortunately, the government’s policy of ease in restrictions has been misinterpreted by people as complete removal of lockdown. While the cabinet has only allowed a few, specific industries to reopen to prevent an economic collapse, but many people have taken it as a green signal to return to their pre-lockdown routines. The traffic has returned to the streets, busin

Meetings of clerics on two different occasions have announced that they will resist the imposition of further restrictions on prayer congregations, the statement came following clear instructions by the government to observe the lockdown in mosques. The government has already vowed to bring clerics and all religious groups on-board before reaching a final decision on April 18 and after that such a decision looks quite confusing. The scholars have promised to take necessary measures for congregations, it is difficult to perceive how they will manage mandatory distancing at each and every mosque at all times, with the rising number of people wanting to participate in congregational prayer. It is duty of the citizens, religious scholars to abide by rules laid down by the government against the corona virus pandemic. The government is responsible for protecting all citizens, which includes clerics. Through their unilateral decision-making, the clerics are putting themselves an

Inspector General National Highways & Motorways Police (NH&MP), Zulfiqar Cheema is reputedly one of the finest officers. Recently he came up with the idea of establishing ‘wake-up points’ for the drivers on motorways. Unfortunately, NH&MP need to wake up its operational staff more than ‘wake up points’ for the drivers. Some negligent incidents have been taking place right under the nose of the NH&MP officials, which could have been resulted into a total devastation. On October 31 I was traveling in a local bus with the registration number Peshawar C-9543 from Rawalpindi to Lahore. This vehicle was all set to hit the road with its pathetic traveling conditions. As the bus checked in from the Rawalpindi toll plaza, it was reverted back due to another major problem: the bus was traveling without any route permit. The driver had previous experience of ditching the NH&MP staff, so he decided to take another route. The bus thus checked in from the Turnol entry