TV drama series ‘Hadsa’ banned by Pakistan censors over rape scenes likened to a real-life case

Students of Islami Jamiat Talaba, a wing of religious political party Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami, chant slogans on Nov. 18, 2022, against the releasing of Pakistan-produced movie “Joyland,” which portrays romance between a married man and a transgender woman. Pakistani censors banned on Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023, a TV drama over scenes reminiscent of a notorious gang rape cases, saying the series would “tarnish” the nation’s image by depicting it as an “unsafe place for women.” ARIF ALI / AFP

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Pakistani censors have banned a TV drama over scenes reminiscent of a notorious gang rape case, saying the series would “tarnish” the nation’s image by depicting it as an “unsafe place for women.”

Regulators said the show “Hadsa” would be pulled from airwaves due to parallels to the real-life case of a French-Pakistani mother raped in front of her small children after her car ran out of fuel near the eastern city of Lahore.

“Portrayal of such (a) heinous act will not only trigger the trauma of that unfortunate victim but would also tarnish (the) country’s image,” said the order from the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) released on Wednesday evening.

Sexual violence is endemic in deeply patriarchal Pakistan, where women are often treated as second-class citizens and the rape conviction rate is reported to be as low as 0.3 percent.

The 2020 Lahore motorway rape case sparked nationwide protests after local police chided the victim for traveling at night without a male escort.

Then-police chief Umar Sheikh had repeatedly berated the woman—a resident of France—saying she probably “mistook that Pakistani society is just as safe” as her home country.

But PEMRA suggested on Wednesday that “Hadsa,” which began airing last week, would cause overseas viewers to wrongly “perceive Pakistan as (an) unsafe place for women,” adding that it did not portray a “true picture of Pakistani society.”

Lawyer Muhammad Ahmad Pansota told AFP that he had lodged a complaint against the show with PEMRA on behalf of the rape victim.

‘Go through the entire trauma again’

“She said to me actually that whenever she watches an episode, or how people react when they watch it, she has to go through the entire trauma again,” he said. “She’s not very comfortable with that.”

Episodes four and five of “Hadsa” show a woman and her son being kidnapped and assaulted by a gang when their car breaks down, later revealing the character was raped.

Before the series was censored, actress Hadiqa Kiani, who plays the woman, said it was not based on real-life events.

“Unfortunately, the horrific act of rape and violence happens far too often in our society,” she wrote on the social media site X.

“‘Hadsa’ is not based on any one person’s story, it is based off of a sickly common part of our reality.”

In the wake of the Lahore incident, backlash over victim-blaming and abysmal conviction rates spurred legal reforms including the establishment of special courts and chemical castration of serial rapists.

Two men were sentenced to death in 2021 for participating in the rape, but have yet to be executed.

Pakistan regularly censors media it deems offensive to the nation’s conservative Islamic values.

Earlier this year, the website Wikipedia was blocked for hosting “blasphemous content,” while the “Barbie” movie and the critically acclaimed transgender romance film “Joyland” also fell foul of censors.  /ra

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