t was around 1:30am. I was helping my friend close his paan shop when we suddenly heard gunshots. Moments later, a girl came running. She was injured and crying for help. She collapsed a few feet away from us,” recalls Muhammad Owais. Two women were shot in the incident in D Type Colony police station area on July 12 by men they said had been harassing them.

Owais says the injured girl told them that she and her friend had been shot by two motorcycle-riding men who had been following them.

“We immediately called the police helpline, 15, and Rescue 1122. We also rushed to help the other girl. She was lying on Dagranwan Road. We took both of them to our shop, laid them on benches and gave them water,” he says.

Despite being wounded, both women were conscious at the time. They informed the shopkeepers that they were waitresses at the Khayyam Kinara Restaurant on Samundri Road a few hundred metres away. They also said that their assailants had been stalking and harassing them, often flashing weapons while following them on their way home after work.

One of them, 20-year-old Asma Farida, succumbed to her injuries on her way to the hospital. The other, 22-year-old Maryam, is undergoing treatment at the District Headquarters Hospital. He condition remains critical.

According to the FIR, the two women had finished their shift and were riding home on a motorcycle with a colleague, Shafiq, when two men on a motorcycle stopped them near the Dagranwan Road turn and

opened fire at them. Maryam was struck three times in the abdomen and once in the left arm. Asma sustained gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen. Both tried to flee towards Samundri Road. Their attackers fled on their motorcycle. The FIR mentions that Shafiq was manhandled but not hit by a bullet.

Sub-Inspector Muhammad Yasir, who is investigating the case, told The News on Sunday that the two suspects had been apprehended within hours of the shooting. “The suspects, Muhammad Ali and Muhammad Fahad, live nearby in Mohalla Rasoolpura where Maryam, too, lives. They had been harassing her for a while, pressuring her to befriend them. Her family had complained about his to the boys’ parents,” he said.

Yasir said the gun had been recovered. Once the forensic report was received, a formal charge sheet would be submitted to the court.

However, Asma’s father, Abdul Majeed, has expressed concern over the slow pace of the police investigation. He told TNS that although a week had passed since the suspects were arrested; the police had yet to submit the case challan to the court.

Abdul Majeed, 50, is a daily wage labourer. Asma was the youngest of his three daughters. She had taken up the job around a year and a half ago. Majeed says since her death, he has been unable to return to work.

“My daughter was supporting our family like a son,” he says. “She used to tell me, ‘Baba, I won’t let you work too hard. I’ll take care of everything.’“

Just two weeks before this shooting, another 20-year-old girl, Fatima Sarfraz, was shot and killed in Faisalabad’s Partab Nagar area. According to police, the assailant opened fire after she rebuked him for harassing her.

Speaking to TNS, Sunny Zia, project manager at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and a visiting teacher at the University of the Punjab’s Media and Development Communication Department, said: “These girls were killed for refusing to have illicit relationships. Let’s call it what it is—coercion, harassment and violence.

“The media must use the correct words when reporting these crimes. Women are not killed for saying no to friendship; they’re murdered for resisting control and refusing to surrender to unjust demands.”

Zia said women seen on the streets – whether students or working – were considered easy targets. “They harassment on the streets, at their workplaces and during their commute. Some of them end up dead.”

Sonia Patras, deputy director of the Association of Women for Awareness and Motivation, a non-governmental organisation working to empower women, told TNS that the recent incidents in Faisalabad have raised serious concerns about the effectiveness of the legal mechanisms to protect women from harassment.

“These incidents have exposed the poor performance of law enforcement agencies, which have repeatedly failed to hold the perpetrators to account and ensure justice,” she said.

Patras said while governments had introduced several laws to prevent gender-based crimes and set up institutions such as the National Commission on the Status of Women, such incidents remained commonplace on account of “a lack of political will, poor human resources and inadequate funding.”

She also said that low public awareness about available protective mechanisms such as helplines, commissions and complaint processes was a factor in the state of women’s [lack of] security.

Patras said that the state must be a party to legal proceedings in such cases and discourage settlements that allow perpetrators to pressure victims’ families into a compromise.

The writer has been associated with journalism for the past decade. He tweets @naeemahmad876