In September 2025, Pakistan’s leading television channel, Geo Entertainment, aired a primetime drama called Case No. 9.

It was written by Shahzeb Khanzada, one of Pakistan’s most prominent investigative journalists, a man who has spent his career documenting exactly what institutions do when they want to protect themselves rather than the people they serve. It starred Saba Qamar, one of Pakistan’s most celebrated actresses, known for taking on roles that Pakistani television usually avoids. It was reviewed in Dawn, The Telegraph India, The Friday Times, Gulf News, and Pakistan Today. Critics praised it for its portrayal of victim-blaming, the misuse of power, and the challenges survivors face when seeking justice through a system that was not designed with them in mind.

Case No. 9 is about a woman who is assaulted by a powerful man and fights for justice. It is not my story. It is not about family courts.

And yet.....

What the drama documents

The drama portrays a specific set of institutional dynamics. Critics across multiple countries named them explicitly in their reviews.

From Dawn: the drama tackles victim-blaming, the misuse of power, and the challenges survivors face in Pakistani society.

From The Friday Times: the drama exposes the anomalies and incongruities of the legal system, rape victims are subjected to invasive questioning and discouraged from reporting, the conviction rate is a mere 3%.

From The Telegraph India: the show depicts how money can be used to manipulate the system, how a powerful man’s lawyers can influence law enforcers, and how the trauma of a survivor is compounded by a society that values honour over empathy.

From Dawn Images: the leading women refuse easy victimhood. The drama grants women agency, professional identity, and narrative authority.

These are reviews of a fictional drama. But the institutional dynamics they name, victim-blaming, the privileging of powerful narratives, a system that compounds harm rather than addresses it, the silencing of those who speak, are documented in family court harms reports by the UK’s own oversight bodies.

The MOJ Harm Report (2020) documented that family court proceedings compound harm for children and families.

The UN Special Rapporteur (A/HRC/53/36, 2023) documented that women in UK family proceedings are advised by their own legal representatives not to raise domestic abuse concerns.

The PAC (HC 883, 2025) concluded that families are going through harmful processes with no accountability mechanism.

The Children and Families Truth Commission (2024) documented, across 600+ families, that domestic abuse is mislabelled as parental alienation, children’s voices are dismissed, and protective parents are penalised for advocating for their children’s safety.

Case No. 9 is about criminal justice. The courts are different. The institutional dynamics are the same.

What I saw when I watched it

I watched Case No. 9 alone. I did not expect what happened next.

Within the first few episodes, I stopped watching a drama and started watching a document.

The dynamics on screen were not fictional to me. They were familiar. Scene by scene, the playbook unfolded. I had seen it. I had lived inside it. Not in a criminal court. In a family court. In a county in England. In proceedings that are still, legally, ongoing.

I am not comparing what happened to Sehar in the drama with what happened in my case. They are different situations, different systems. What I am saying is that the institutional dynamics, the way power operates, the way narratives are constructed and weaponised, the way the person raising the complaint is placed on trial rather than the person accused. were not foreign to me.

I watched a smear campaign unfold on screen and recognised the architecture. Character assassination presented as evidence. The victim’s credibility systematically dismantled. A powerful man’s account privileged without scrutiny. A woman’s account met with suspicion at every turn.

I watched the scene where the survivor is told that raising the truth will be used against her. The UN Special Rapporteur report A/HRC/53/36, documented this as advice given to women in UK family proceedings by their own legal representatives.

I watched the drama portray what its critics named in their reviews: a system designed to protect the powerful, in which the odds are weighted against those who speak. In which raising the truth, without the resources to sustain the fight, is itself made into evidence of instability.

I watched a character say: I had to take on the entire system.

I have said that sentence. Not about a drama. About my life.

The drama closes with a question its critics framed across every review: will the survivor get justice? In the drama, the answer is yes. The truth does not stay buried. The lies unravel. The over-confidence of the powerful becomes their undoing. The public record becomes the antidote to the private campaign.

I am building the public record. Post by post. Submission by submission. Parliamentary acceptance by parliamentary acceptance.

What the mirror shows

Aamina Sheikh, who plays the lawyer in Case No. 9, was asked why she said yes to the role after seven years away from television. Her answer: it was a matter of doing the right thing at the right time.

Saba Qamar, who plays the survivor, spoke about the emotional toll of the role. She described the experience of embodying a woman who goes to the police station alone, in the middle of the night, because the system has given her no other option.

Critics praised the drama for showing that justice is possible. For holding a mirror to society. For refusing to let the narrative end with silence.

The UK’s own oversight bodies have held the same mirror to the family court system. Parliament accepted the evidence. The UN raised human rights concerns. The Ministry of Justice named the harm. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner documented the ongoing failures.

What Pakistan chose to do with a mirror held to institutional failure was to put it on prime time television, written by an investigative journalist, starring the country’s most acclaimed actresses, reviewed across four countries.

The question the mirror asks

Case No. 9 closes with a question its critics summarised across every review: will the survivor get justice?

The answer, in the drama, is yes.

My submission to the Justice Committee asked four questions. One of them was this:

What lawful claim is being made and by whom over me and my son, and upon what lawful basis and with what lawful testimony?

That question has not been answered.

Pakistan put Case No. 9 on prime time. England has not answered the question.

Pakistan made this conversation mainstream.

England has referred me back to closed doors, where I have experienced nothing but institutional abuse, and where Parliament has already accepted my evidence and concluded that those same courts are harmful. Parliament named the harm. The court that caused it continues to operate without accountability. And I am sent back there!!!

My hope, placed openly

It is therefore that I now place my hope, openly and publicly, in Gabriel’s family in Pakistan.

Gabriel’s paternal family are people of standing. They know this narrative. It has been on mainstream Pakistani television. They understand what it means when a woman fights a powerful institutional system and the truth does not stay buried. They have watched that story told on Geo Entertainment, praised internationally, written by one of Pakistan’s most respected journalists.

I trust that they would like to be able to hold their heads high about what Gabriel and I have created together. Not despite the constraint. Because of what we built within it.

Two Amazon international bestsellers. Number 1 in the USA. A methodology achieving 100% engagement across 465 children. Explored by UNICEF for global distribution. Celebrated in Pakistan, India, Canada, Nigeria, the United States. Accepted as evidence by the UK Parliament.

The children in Bradford who inspired StoryQuest, the majority of them descendants of Pakistani families, told us what it means to be the author of your own story. Their voices, their stories, their creativity is what I now share with the world in media, podcasts, and content. Many of those children are Pakistani heritage children. Their voices are the foundation of something extraordinary.

I trust that Gabriel’s family in Pakistan would rather celebrate that than be seen to condemn it.

I trust that they understand that the narrative of a mother fighting an institutional system that has been found harmful by Parliament, the UN, and every oversight body that examined it is not a narrative they want to be on the wrong side of.

Case No. 9 made that story mainstream in Pakistan. The question it asks, will the survivor get justice? — has an answer in the drama.

I am asking Gabriel’s family in Pakistan to be part of ensuring the answer is the same in real life.