WHEN Zarina Bibi lost her battle for life in a Rawalpindi hospital on Wednesday night she became just another statistic in Pakistan’s appalling record of violent crime against women. And behind that statistic lay yet another horror story.

Before she died from severe burns, Ms Bibi, 30, a mother of three children, told police how her husband had doused her with paraffin and set her alight after a row over his relationships with other women.

Ms Bibi said that Mohammed Tariq, her husband of eight years, lost his temper after she objected to him returning to their home with a prostitute. She was badly beaten before being burnt and was taken to the hospital by neighbours.Ms Bibi said that their relationship was strained because her husband would regularly come home with prostitutes.

Scores of Pakistani women are burnt by their husbands or male relatives every year in the name of honour, or over petty issues such as disobeying their husbands or failing to perform routine chores.

Acid attacks are also common and frequently leave the victims mutilated. Most of the attacks occur in poor, rural areas, and go unreported owing to the apathy of the police and loopholes in the law. In many cases the perpetraters pay bribes to regain their freedom.

An average of ten Pakistani women were physically abused every day in the past year, according to a report by Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid. In most cases the perpetrators were close relatives. More than 70 per cent of the attacks occurred in Punjab, the country’s largest province.

Human rights activists say that crimes against women are usually carried in the name of “tradition”. Even in the Pakistani parliament many MPs, particularly those belonging to the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, defend the honour killing of women. In December, the parliament passed a Bill to strengthen the law against “honour killings ”, allowing stiffer penalties for men who kill female relatives for a perceived slight on their honour.

But opposition members and human rights organisations maintain that the Bill was so diluted that it has lost its effectiveness. It does not outlaw killers buying their freedom by paying compensation. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan more than 1,000 people were victims of honour killings last year, the majority of them women.

Ms Bibi’s husband has yet to be arrested.

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