Guns going off

SHE was articulate, she was poised and she was intelligent. Now Rabia Ahsan, television news anchor, entrepreneur and mother to two, is dead. According to news reports, this is how the tragic events unfolded.

On the afternoon of November 8, 2026, Rabia Ahsan was at her home in Rawalpindi, incidentally located not far from where Hina Javed, the last woman whose murder I wrote about in this column also died. At around 2.30 pm, Rabia’s mother and sister, who were in the lawn, heard a gunshot. They rushed into the bedroom she shared with her husband. Her sister found Rabia on the ground in a pool of blood and her husband Ahsan Tahir allegedly standing nearby holding a pistol.

Police arrested her husband and recovered the weapon. According to City Police Officer Hassan Sukhera, a male domestic worker told the police that Ahsan Tahir had claimed the gun went off accidentally. An FIR, registered on the complaint of her brother Khurram Ahmed, stated among other things that the husband could not produce a licence for the firearm.

On Nov 9, the court granted police one-day physical remand of the suspect. The following day, his remand was extended by four days. Investigators sought forensic examinations and a polygraph test, alleging inconsistencies in the husband’s statements to the police. The findings of the test are not yet known.

Why do our guns, like our society, hate women so much?

According to police sources, the post-mortem examination of Rabia Ahsan’s body did not find any evidence of violence on her body. They said that the spent shell casing and pistol had been sent for forensic examination. The police alleged that the forensic examination and the polygraph would provide further clues as to what transpired in the bedroom that day while the couple were allegedly retrieving winter clothes from their cupboards.

In the meantime, her brother Khurram has publicly stated that he believed her husband’s account and did not think this was a deliberate killing. Other family members have also said the relationship was stable and there was no marital tension.

There is, however, one important person from Rabia Ahsan’s life who does not agree with the account being presented by the family. Senior journalist Aamir Mateen, Rabia Ahsan’s former co-host alleged in his programme that he personally knew that Ahsan was a victim of domestic violence.

He claimed that there were numerous times when he knew that she was going through a very difficult time and was facing tensions at home. At one point, Mateen alleged, Ahsan had left her marital home and was living at the house of a friend for at least a month. Her family then intervened and persuaded her to return home for the sake of the children. Mateen said that he had given a statement to the police and would provide further statements to authorities.

Rabia Ahsan’s case remains under investigation. According to police officials, FIRs once registered cannot be withdrawn and the judge in the case will now determine how the case will proceed. It is important, however, to consider the number of times in recent history that wives are found dead and husbands allege that the “gun went off accidentally.”

In November 2022, a young wife named Saba who lived in a rented home near Eidgah Ground in Karachi was similarly found dead. Her husband, a police constable, claimed that the gun went off by accident and the bullet happened to strike his wife. His in-laws disputed his claim and registered an FIR. The current status of the case is unclear.

In October 2025, a woman named Farzana who lived in Gulistan-i-Jau­h­­ar was killed in a shooting involving her husband. Ac­­co­rding to the police, the two had been filming a TikTok video and Farzana asked her husband if the gun was loaded. The husband told her it was not loaded and so she told him to hold the gun at her temple and pulled the trigger. The husband, Ghulam Mustafa, claimed that he had no idea that there was a bullet in the chamber. The husband was arrested but it is unclear whether he has been charged with the crime.

Guns in the hands of husbands, it appears, just seem to go off and bullets just happen to miraculously hit their wives. Accidentally firing guns in the hands of husbands seem exceptionally well suited to avoid walls or floors or ceilings that make up a far larger surface area of the surroundings of any given situation and go for the only other human present.

Also interestingly, these guns that go off when a man and a woman are present never seem to hit the man — it is always the woman. As we mourn yet another accomplished, intelligent dead woman in Pakistan, one must consider why our guns, like our society, hate women so much?

The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.

rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2026