On October 26, 2025, Pakistan’s Supreme Court quietly but significantly shifted how the law understands harm inside marriage. In a judgment written by Justice Ayesha A. Malik, the Court ruled that abuse is not limited to physical violence. Psychological and emotional harm, humiliation, intimidation, coercion, and neglect can also amount to abuse and are now valid grounds for dissolving a marriage.
Courts have long refused to see such harms and instead historically treated visible injury as the most credible proof of violence. With this new ruling, Pakistan has moved its domestic law closer to international human rights standards that measure abuse by its impact on dignity, autonomy, and safety rather than physical harm.
Defining psychological abuse and why law struggles to name it
The World Health Organization describes psychological abuse as patterns of behaviour such as humiliation, intimidation, threats, isolation, and controlling actions that damage a person’s mental well-being and sense of self. Research undertaken at National Louis University and published by Pakistan Social Sciences Review show that psychological abuse has serious and lasting effects, such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Over time, it can wear a person down and undermine their confidence, decision-making, and economic independence.
Despite this, many legal systems across South Asia continue to struggle to define psychological abuse clearly. Courts often treat it as less serious than physical violence or dismiss it as a private family matter, particularly when there are no visible injuries. Laws frequently refer to “cruelty” without detailing what emotional or mental harm looks like in everyday life. This leaves judges beholden to medical reports, police records, or isolated incidents that hardly show sustained abuse.
Psychological abuse does not usually take the form of a single, dramatic event but manifests through repeated and constant belittlement, intimidation, manipulation, and control that adds up over time. Legal frameworks designed to respond to isolated acts of physical violence often fail to recognize these patterns, allowing sustained harm to go unaddressed.
Why this matters for Pakistan and other South Asian countries
Although divorce on the grounds of cruelty is legally available in Pakistan, the absence of clear standards makes it difficult to account for harm that does not leave visible marks. This both reflects and reinforces the scale of domestic violence in the country, as survivors of psychological abuse often struggle to make legally compelling cases in court.
According to Pakistan’s National Commission on Human Rights, nearly 90 percent of Pakistani women will experience some form of domestic violence in their lifetime. Data from the Sustainable Social Development Organization recorded around 33,000 cases of gender-based violence in 2024 and linked more than 2,000 of them to domestic abuse. Given persistent underreporting of violence inside the home, these numbers reflect only a fraction of what actually takes place.
Pakistan’s own experience with domestic violence legislation shows how recognition can falter without enforcement. Punjab’s Protection of Women Against Violence Act (2016) was one of the country’s most ambitious efforts to recognize psychological and economic abuse and provide protection centers and civil remedies. However, years of political disinterest, poor coordination, and lack of resources meant the law remains largely inaccessible to most women.
The Supreme Court’s ruling comes at a moment of renewed public debate around gender-based violence in Pakistan shaped by high-profile cases (for example, Noor Mukaddam’s murder) and growing feminist advocacy. This groundswell empowers lower courts with language they have historically lacked and raises the stakes for how courts assess cruelty in family law proceedings.
The challenges Pakistan faces are shared across South Asia. India’s Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (2005) includes emotional and verbal abuse, yet courts often continue to privilege physical injury. In Bangladesh, laws acknowledge mental torture, but implementation remains weak, especially outside urban centers. Sri Lanka’s legal framework still largely ties abuse to bodily harm. Across the region, the pattern is consistent: Even where laws recognizing psychological abuse exist, visible violence remains the most credible form of harm.
Seen in this context, Pakistan’s ruling has the potential to be an important test case. It quietly pressures neighboring legal systems to move beyond symbolic recognition and confront the harder task of enforcing protections against abuse.
What changes and what doesn’t
The ruling has clear human rights implications. First, it gives lower courts access to actionable language they did not have before. Judges can now name psychological harm instead of dismissing it as normal marital conflict. Second, it offers survivors a form of legal validation.
But recognition alone does not equal protection. Family courts operate under heavy caseloads, police lack training to identify psychological abuse, and judges continue to prioritize visible proof. Without training, resources, and accountability, this decision may remain powerful in principle but ineffective in practice.
The question—one that resonates far beyond Pakistan—is whether legal systems are willing to keep listening when the harm leaves no marks.
