New Delhi: The killing of a Pakistani television anchor has sparked outrage, with one journalist calling it the perils of living in the country’s “sickeningly patriarchal” society. Rabia Ahsan was found shot dead at her home in Rawalpindi on Sunday. Her husband, a government official, was arrested after reportedly confessing to the killing though he initially claimed the gun had gone off accidentally.
The case has prompted her colleagues to raise questions about possible domestic abuse, bringing renewed attention to violence against women in Pakistan.
“A speaking woman is better than a silenced one. A society that crushes its women will never rise no matter how many mosques it builds, how many dramas it airs, how many speeches it gives about honour. Honour is not in burying women alive. Honour is in letting them live,” Pakistani journalist Fereeha Idrees wrote in a long post on X.
Police recovered an unlicensed .30-bore pistol, suspected to be the murder weapon, from among clothes at the residence, Dawn reported. During questioning, Ahsan Tahir Khan, a Grade-18 officer with the Overseas Pakistanis Foundation, told investigators that he was unaware his gun was loaded.
Idrees said several of Rabia Ahsan’s colleagues had suggested that she had been dealing with a troubled marriage and had sometimes arrived at work with bruises.
Idrees also pointed to an apparent contradiction between these accounts and the initial statements given by Ahsan’s immediate family to police, in which they reportedly said there had been no dispute. Neither the allegations of domestic abuse nor the circumstances surrounding the shooting have been independently established.
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Who was Rabia Ahsan?
Ahsan, 42, was an anchor and programme host at Pakistan’s private television channel 92 News. She also co-hosted a current affairs programme with senior journalists Amir Mateen and Rauf Klasra.
She was also an entrepreneur who ran a salon in Islamabad and worked as a communications consultant. The anchor also did vlogging, acting and content creation related to women’s health and beauty.
She was a mother of two daughters, aged 13 and 11. The children were reportedly playing on the lawn with their maternal grandmother when the shooting took place, Dawn reported.
Mateen, who said he had worked with Ahsan for at least five years, described her death as heart-wrenching. In a tribute on X, he recalled her as a professional broadcaster and entrepreneur who had tried to balance the demands of her career with her responsibilities as a mother, daughter, and sister.
“She was what every woman in a sickeningly patriarchal Pakistan would like to be. She was an icon in every way and did not deserve to die like this. It will take a while for us to absorb the shock of her early death. May she rest in peace in a world free of rigorous pressures of society,” he wrote on X.
Prominent Pakistani journalist Munizae Jahangir said Ahsan’s death was a reminder that women often endure domestic abuse in silence, with societal pressures preventing them from leaving abusive relationships even when legal protections exist.
Journalist Ammara Ahmad also paid tribute to Ahsan, reflecting on the social expectations placed on women and how support often comes only after their deaths.
“Rabiya Ahsan – our parents say “doli mein jana, qandhon par aana” – Lu aa gaye woh qandhon pe, zindagi mein tu qandha diya nahi kissi ne … ab ajayeinge sab jinazey par ..,” she wrote on X.
According to figures cited by Idrees from data presented by the human rights minister in Pakistan’s National Assembly, more than 7,500 women were murdered between 2021 and 2024, including 1,553 in so-called honour killings. The same period saw 173,367 reported cases of violence against women and 17,771 cases of rape and gang rape.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)