By Abdul Rehman Patel
There are moments in every society when a single incident becomes more than a tragedy. It becomes a diagnosis. It reveals the internal weaknesses that everyone knew existed but preferred not to confront. For the United States, one such moment arrived on a cold Texas night in 2013, when four people were killed by a wealthy teenager driving under the influence. Ethan Couch, a boy raised in privilege, killed four human beings without understanding, as his lawyers argued, the consequences of his actions because he suffered from “affluenza” — a condition born not of poverty or trauma, but of excess. A sickness of entitlement. It was a term so bizarre that it felt like satire until the court accepted it.
The verdict travelled the world as a reminder that the scales of justice rarely balance when weighed down by wealth. On a winter evening in Islamabad, two young girls rode home on a small scooter. Their lives were ordinary. Their dreams were modest. They had neither the luxury of protection nor the backing of power. From the opposite side came a roaring V8 — the kind of car that signals authority long before it comes into view. Behind the wheel, police say, was an underage driver. The collision was fatal. Two girls died instantly. Their names, their stories, their families’ pain — all of it was folded into a case file that would be opened and closed with astonishing speed.
Five days for the police to form their conclusions. Five days for the lawyers to retreat into silence. Five days for the courts, usually exhausted by backlog and suffocated by delay, to suddenly find a burst of energy. In a system where litigants die before their cases end, where property disputes last longer than childhoods, and where even bail hearings can stretch into years, a case involving the death of two girls was effectively wrapped up before the week had ended. What happened within those five days will be discussed for years — but what did not happen is even more damning. There were no clear CCTV recordings from Islamabad’s much-celebrated Safe City system. No independent eyewitness accounts presented with conviction.
No meaningful explanation for how an expensive vehicle, allegedly carrying a fake number plate, roamed through the capital without being stopped. The public did not see evidence; it saw only the absence of it. And in that vacuum grew a familiar suspicion: that justice in Pakistan bends when touched by wealth. Officials have said the victims’ families forgave the accused. Forgiveness, in its true form, is a moral act — a gesture of grace rather than a product of pressure. But in a country where power enters a room long before any official arrives, it is difficult to know whether forgiveness was offered or manufactured. It is not enough to say that families consented. One must ask under what circumstances that consent was shaped.
When the poor face the powerful, silence becomes its own language — a language written not with words but with fear. The speed of the case also laid bare the peculiar elasticity of Pakistan’s judicial system. When influential groups demand action, courts can move mountains. A lawyer’s strike can freeze courtrooms. A judge’s letter can shake a government. But here, where two children of poor families were killed, there were no loud voices, no moral outrage, no insistence that the process unfold with transparency. Civil society, usually quick to respond to high-profile injustices, remained quiet.
The silence felt less like apathy and more like resignation — a recognition that some tragedies are destined to remain small because the victims were small in the eyes of power. The comparison with the United States is painful but necessary. Ethan Couch’s story ignited nationwide debate. American media dissected every aspect of the verdict. The idea that wealth could shield someone from basic accountability became part of a wider reflection on privilege and the justice system. Pakistan, by contrast, buried its version of the same tragedy in a quiet corner of the news cycle.
(The Pakistani-origin American writer and columnist, sheds light on various social and political issues, can be reached at editorial@metro-morning.com)
