🚨🚨 #Pakkstan’s “only” credible newspaper @dawn_com’s Editor @abbasz55 sahb took retirement after his 45 years in journalism and 16 years in #Dawn. Respect sir 🫡

She wrote a letter to the Supreme Court. Not a formal petition. Not a legal brief. A letter. From a resident of Street 35, F-6/1, Islamabad. About a WAPDA grid station being built in a residential green belt. The Supreme Court treated that letter as a human rights petition. The resulting judgment changed Pakistani constitutional law permanently. Shahla Zia. Born February 12, 1947. Lahore. Daughter of Mahmood Ali Khan, an activist in the Pakistan Movement. She graduated in law from the University of the Punjab in the late 1960s. At a time when women barely entered the legal profession. She was one of the first practicing female lawyers in Pakistan. She built her entire career around one question. What does the law actually owe to women. And then she went and made the law answer. She was one of four women who founded AGHS Law Associates in Lahore. The law firm that provided legal services to women who had no other access to the legal system. Alongside Asma Jahangir, Hina Jilani, and Parveen Agha. Four women building the most consequential women's rights law practice in Pakistani history. She was a founding member of Women's Action Forum. She fought the Hudood Ordinances. She fought the Law of Evidence. She fought every discriminatory law that the Zia-ul-Haq regime passed under the cover of Islamization. She kept fighting through the 1980s and 1990s when the pressure was direct and the personal cost was real. She served on every government commission on the status of women she was asked to join. She resigned from all of them when the National Assembly approved Sharia law through the Fifteenth Constitutional Amendment in 1998. She refused to lend legitimacy to what she could not in conscience support. Then the letter. 1994. A WAPDA grid station was being constructed in a residential area of Islamabad. Four residents including Shahla Zia wrote to the Supreme Court. They cited health risks from electromagnetic radiation. They cited zoning violations. They cited the rights of children in the surrounding area. The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Saiduzzaman Siddiqui treated the letter as a human rights petition under Article 184(3) of the Constitution. The judgment that came down in Shehla Zia v. WAPDA was the first time the precautionary principle from international environmental law was imported into Pakistani constitutional jurisprudence. The first time sustainable development principles became part of Pakistan's constitutional framework. The judgment directed WAPDA to issue public notices and invite objections before constructing future grid stations. It established judicial acceptance of public interest litigation for environmental protection. One letter. From a Lahore-born lawyer who had spent 30 years building the legal infrastructure for women's rights in Pakistan. It changed how Pakistani courts interpret the Constitution's environmental obligations. The case still bears her name. Pakistan's National Commission on the Status of Women was her brainchild. Asma Jahangir wrote about her after she died: Shahla was one of Pakistan's first practicing women lawyers. Her loss is irreplaceable. She died on March 10, 2005. Islamabad. Aged 58. After a brief illness. Her daughter Maliha Zia Lari is also a lawyer and human rights activist. She wrote one letter. It is still cited in Pakistani courts. Shahla Zia. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰