Using the funds, Ms Mai set up a shelter for abused women and bought a van which is now used as an ambulance in the area. It is ironic that even as her alleged tormentors were freed, the woman who has become a symbol of courage and the rights of Pakistani women was barred from proceeding abroad."In the village, their homes are right across from Ms Mai's. Every day she must now face the men who gang-raped her and who threaten to do the same again. Naturally Ms Mai was upset and traumatised by last week's decision. But there was also trauma in Islamabad, where the prospect of her imminent visit to the United States was being viewed with trepidation.
By last year, Mukhtar Mai had become an international icon for abused women after challenging her rapists and apparently winning Time magazine named her as one of Asia's heroes. Half a dozen of the 14 village men involved were set to hang.Ms Mai had used her compensation money in the case to start two schools in her village. She even helped to enroll the children of some of her attackers, in order to show that she bore no grudges. According to a leader in The News, an Islamabad English-language daily: "The police failed to provide the prosecution with the damning evidence" even though there were some 150 onlookers who could have testified.
"It is introspection time for government," the leader continued."It must review the system that routinely acts against people, and sometimes against the government itself ...
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She fought back in the courts and at first the legal decisions appeared to go her way. Half a dozen men involved in her rape were punished, with two sentenced to death. But since that early success events have begun to take an increasingly sinister and depressing turn. Last Friday, a court in Lahore refused to extend a 90-day detention order and 12 of the 14 accused were ordered to be released. The case has gone into appeal, and now is expected to go to the Supreme Court.All the men must do is post a £600 bail each and they can leave jail while the case now goes through a series of appeals.
