Scary Story

This Halloween, as on any other, the book shops were full of horror books and television was showing all the cheesy horror movies ever made. Now personally, the horror genre does nothing for me i.e. it does not scare me. However what I ended up reading on Halloween night, while sitting at a Barnes and Noble, was truly scary. The book was, “In the Name of Honor: A Memoir” by Mukhtar Mai and Nicholas D. Kristoff (http://www.amazon.com/Name-Honor-Memoir-Mukhtar-Mai/dp/1416532285/sr=8-1/qid=1162406574/ref=sr_1_1/102-4766004-2776928?ie=UTF8&s=books). Most of us have heard some part of this story but the details of the case are truly horrifying including how the government treated her.
Initially six of the defendants were given the death penalty by an anti-terrorism court (They could not carry the case in normal courts because the perpetrators either had to confess or four male witnesses were required and everything was “terrorism” in those days). The Lahore High Court on appeal set five defendants free and gave life imprisonment to one. After all the brouhaha on this verdict the Supreme Court opened the case for review. That is where the book ends.
It is interesting how the story initially gets out. The mullah of the mosque in the village condemns the act in his sermon. A local reporter present there picks up the story and publishes it. From there things snowball to national and international press. The police play a despicable role of pressuring her to change her story and getting her thumb print on a piece of paper where the policeman writes down whatever he is told by his superiors. The investigating judge is the first person to treat her humanely.
Through her ordeal she opens up schools and becomes the face of many women’s rights organizations and confronts the prime minister in a face to face and blasts the Governor of Punjab for a photo op with her.
She is invited outside the country but is put on exit control list (because it will be bad for the image of the country) and under house arrest (apparently for her own protection) and denied access to her lawyer. When the earth quake strikes she is finally let out of the country so she could go out and raise funds for the quake victims. The website of the organization named for her is http://mukhtarmaiwwo.org/