Pakistan, Jan. 22 -- The Supreme Court, in Khursheed Ahmad v The State, did something our institutions rarely manage. It named the domestic violence ecosystem plainly, not as a scandal, not as a spectacle, but as a structure. Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim's judgment did more than uphold a conviction for the murder of Gulshan Bibi; it recorded the social choreography that so often precedes a woman's death, wherein she leaves, she is persuaded back, she returns to what the court called a "living hell."

That phrase matters because it shifts the centre of gravity, recognising that murder in an abusive home is rarely a sudden bolt. It is the last chapter of a story written with family pressure, community silence, police indifference, and the conven...