The recent Supreme Court judgment in the case of Hassan Khan vs The State has sent shockwaves through legal and human rights circles in Pakistan. The ruling, which overturned the conviction of an accused in a sexual violence case involving Farhat Bibi, has been criticized for setting a dangerous legal precedent and for its deeply problematic interpretation of consent and victim testimony.
A Victim's Silence Misconstrued as Consent
Farhat Bibi's seven-month delay in reporting the crime was a central point in the case. The court's scrutiny of this delay ignored the complex realities faced by survivors. Discriminatory gender norms, powerful social taboos, religious pressures, and credible threats of violence are well-documented reasons why victims of sexual assault often remain silent. The traumatic nature of the crime itself can trigger responses of denial, fear, and withdrawal.
Furthermore, the court found fault with Farhat Bibi's demeanor during cross-examination, interpreting her "unshaken" composure not as resilience forged through a decade of litigation, but as evidence of "active participation." This reasoning establishes a narrow, idealized standard for how a "credible" victim must behave. It implies that if a woman does not perform distress in a specific, expected manner, her lack of resistance can be misread as consent—a logic that places an unjust burden on survivors and regresses the legal understanding of coercion.
Systemic Failures and Disregarded Evidence
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the judgment was the casual dismissal of credible evidence. The police had recovered the gun used by the accused, Hassan Khan, at the time of the 2015 incident. However, because no local witness was present to verify the recovery scene, this critical piece of evidence was rendered inadmissible. Justice Salahuddin Panhwar, in his dissenting note, highlighted repeated threats made to the victim prior to the attack, which were also never formally presented in court.
This points to a profound institutional failure. The responsibility to collect, record, and formalize evidence lies with state authorities like the police. Their lapses should invite greater judicial scrutiny, not become a barrier to justice that victims must overcome. Similarly, forensic evidence, including DNA samples collected in 2015, was delayed by two years in analysis. The bench cited an international journal to state that such evidence degrades within weeks, raising serious questions about the lack of urgency in Pakistan's forensic laboratories.
The Regressive Reliance on a Discredited Test
In a move that contradicts its own progressive stance, the Supreme Court bench redirected focus to the two-finger test performed on Farhat Bibi in 2015. This test, used to supposedly determine "habituation to sexual intercourse," was nationally outlawed by the same Supreme Court in 2021 for being medically worthless and a violation of dignity.
The court's application of this discredited practice in a 2025 judgment is baffling. As an appellate court, it is expected to apply the law as it stands today. Using an outlawed, unscientific test to infer consent not only undermines the Court's own landmark 2021 ruling but also actively harms the legal framework designed to protect survivors with dignity.
The Hassan Khan vs The State judgment is a landmark, but not a celebratory one. It prioritizes suspicion over fact, subjective morality over objective law, and archaic expectations over lived trauma. It reinforces the toxic idea that silence implies guilt and that a lack of physical resistance equates to consent. Most alarmingly, it frames systemic and institutional inefficiencies as burdens to be borne by the victims themselves, further obstructing the path to justice.
