GUJRANWALA: Nearly three years after Saba Qaiser’s father and uncle shot her in the face, rolled her in a rug and threw her in a river for marrying without their consent, the 21-year-old is again afraid for her life.

After surviving the attack in Gujranwala, Ms Qaiser was determined to ensure the men were brought to justice.

Even though her father and uncle were arrested and jailed, she was pressured by relatives to forgive them under a law that until last October allowed killers who had been pardoned by family members to walk free.

Since the case did not go to trial, the men were released after two months in jail.

“Although I had to tell the court that I had forgiven them, I never did from my heart,” said Ms Qaiser, whose story was told in the 2016 Oscar-winning documentary, A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness by filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.

Her uncle never forgot the “dishonour” she had brought on the family, and when he came across a trailer for Ms Obaid-Chinoy’s film last year, he was furious, she explained.

“He came to my house at night and asked for me and started shooting from his pistol. I was lucky to survive his attack,” said Ms Qaiser, whose left cheek bears a scar running from mouth to temple from the previous attack.

Her father and uncle were once again taken into custody, in April 2016, and are expected to be freed later this month after she decided not to press charges against them.

Women’s rights campaigners say the case illustrates the difficulties of prosecuting such crimes despite new legislation against “honour killings”, which removed the loophole that once enabled pardoned killers to go free.

The new law was passed in October 2016 — three months after the murder of an outspoken social media star, Qandeel Baloch, whose brother was arrested in connection with her death by strangulation.

The new law still gives victims’ relatives the option of forgiving attackers, but only in cases where the culprits have been sentenced to death. Even if a pardon is given, attackers face a mandatory life sentence.

After the attack, Ms Qaiser’s mother was forbidden by her husband from seeing her daughter and forced to move to Sargodha from her daughter.

She visits her husband in prison every week. But as soon as the visit is over, she secretly sees her daughter.

“My husband is not angry at her. It’s his brother who provokes him and after they are out of the jail, we will break ties with him,” she said.

Her daughter, however, fears the matter will not end there.

“He’ll be madder at me and will want to harm me for sending him to jail for the second time,” she said in the dimly-lit room where she lives with her husband and two children.

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2017