The dolorous story of a 27-year-old woman, who was lynched by angry mob, outraged the public conscience profoundly. Shocking video has emerged of a woman being beaten to death by an angry mob in Kabul. Farkhunda, who was believed mentally ill, was lynched by a crowd of men near the Shah-e Doh Shamshira shrine and mosque after she was allegedly seen burning a copy of the Holy Koran. The video of the attack shows the woman being battered, stamped on and beaten and struck with a piece of wood. One of the attackers hurls a brick at her as she lay on the ground, and others are seen kicking and punching her lifeless body. Her body was then taken to the Kabul River where it was burned. Several of the men in the video can be seen filming the attack with their mobile phones. The footage later surfaced on social media websites.

Speaking to the BBC, an eyewitness described the incident saying: “I heard noise, I went and people said that a woman is burning Koran. When I went closer I saw angry people shouting they want to kill the woman. They beat her to death and then threw her on the river side and burned her. Firefighters later came and put out the fire and took the body.”

The head of Kabul’s criminal police, General Farid Afzali, confirmed reports of the incident and said, “A woman burned a copy of the Koran in the Shahi Doshamshira neighborhood.”

The victim was accused of setting fire to pages of the Koran; however her parents have told Kabul police that their daughter had suffered with mental illness for many years and had not meant to burn the Holy Koran.

Desert court is against the soul of law and religious sharia. Whoever was involved in killing Farkhunda, who allegedly suffered from neurotic disorder, has violated the law flagrantly and has to be prosecuted. It is also highly degrading to torture a woman in public. The frenzied attackers are not only involved in death but also in besmirching the character of the woman.

Torturing one is forbidden in Afghanistan’s law and so far one is not proved guilty by authoritative court, s/he will be considered innocent. The Constitution of Afghanistan states in article 25, “Innocence is the original state. The accused shall be innocent until proven guilty by the order of an authoritative court.” Moreover, article 27 says, “…No one shall be pursued, arrested, or detained without due process of law. No one shall be punished without the decision of an authoritative court taken in accordance with the provisions of the law, promulgated prior to commitment of the offense.”

The perpetrators have put the social order under question. The Thursday’s lugubrious incident will augment violence and chaos in the society. The desert court is not unprecedented in Afghanistan. As a result, a man and woman who eloped were found butchered close to a graveyard in Helmand province last year. Moreover, a woman was captured after eloping with her loved one by her villagers and killed by people last year in Nangarhar – where the police failed to release her from the angry mob. But, the perpetrators were all left unprosecuted. Breaking the law with impunity will disseminate lawlessness.

Anyhow, in the aftermath of Farkhunda’s death, human rights groups have voiced concerns as to whether enough was done to stop the rampaging mob.

Heather Barr, a senior researcher for women’s rights in Asia for Human Rights Watch said: “I would certainly hope the government would be trying to arrest and prosecute everyone who was involved and doing an internal investigation into whether the police response was appropriate.”

Women are highly susceptible to domestic and social violence in Afghanistan. Women and girls underwent great suffering in the solar year of 1393. They lost their lives in suicide bombings, mutilated, tortured, dishonored and raped and, at the end of the year, was murdered by the angry mob in the worst possible way. To put it succinctly, their rights and dignity were violated without public concerns.

In macabre stories of violence, the death knells of Afghan women sound, every now and then, lugubriously. The miscreants’ fractious attitudes lead either to injury or death. The insurgents, the patriarchs and the conservatives seem to have turned into sworn enemies of women who will beat to death over a trivial matter – as a man reportedly killed his spouse for not serving a cup of tea. The said individuals evince a deep sense of antipathy towards the issue of human rights, women rights, democracy, and so on – labeling these subjects as the product of foreign states.

Treating women unfairly and inflicting restrictive measures upon them are believed to be detrimental to social norm. In other words, the rights of women are trampled upon on the grounds of traditional prohibitions, which are totally baseless from religious perspective. We have to break the chains from the women’ feet and let them breathe a sigh of freedom and engage in social activities peacefully. The rights and dignity of women should be held in due respect and the violators must stand on a fair trial.

At the end, I would like to express my deep condolence over the tragic murder of Ms. Farkhunda and those who lose their lives as a result of violence. Hope no one will fall prey to violence, lawlessness and desert court anymore.