Kasur, July 28, 2025 – A man was arrested today in Kasur after a video showing him molesting a minor girl went viral online. The suspect tried to flee, brandishing a weapon, but was shot and apprehended by police. Now, he lies in a hospital bed, facing the law. The girl he assaulted, however, is left with trauma that won’t make headlines tomorrow, but will last far longer.
The question is: Would we have reacted if there was no video? Recently, the honor killing case in Balochistan raised a similar question, activist Jibran Nasir remarked that the response to the Quetta honor killings wasn’t to a crime but a viral moment.
Today, that question echoes louder than ever.
We live in a country where child abuse is tragically common, and yet, it takes a clip, a tweet, a trending hashtag for us to pay attention. The outrage is real-but is it sustained? Are we disturbed by the crime itself, or simply the fact that we were forced to witness it?
This Is Not a Viral Moment. This Is a Child’s Life.
If our demand for justice only wakes up when footage surfaces, we aren’t a just society, we’re a performative one. Kasur has seen too many such cases, from the child abuse ring of 2015 to Zainab Ansari’s tragic death. Each time, the internet surged with heartbreak. Each time, silence followed once the cameras stopped rolling.
What will be different this time?
We need to stop treating these moments as social media events and start investing in prevention, education, and protection. The crime should be enough to call us to action-even without the clicks, the shares, the reels.
Let this not be another story we move on from. Let it be the moment we stop needing virality to value a child’s safety.
