Aap Ki Izzat: A look at patriarchy, power systems, and how a killer is made

Ahsan Khan's Tabish didn't kill his wife, but the people around him made him believe it was acceptable to think about doing it.

In cases of violence against women, we often ask who pulled the trigger. We rarely ask who loaded the gun.

According to Sahil, a welfare organization, 3,172 cases of violence against women were reported in the first half of 2026 in Pakistan — that is about 17.52 cases a day, and this number does not include unreported incidents. In 884 cases, the attackers are relatives; in 405, husbands. Over half of these incidents happened at home.

In the drama Aap Ki Izzat, we watch another husband, Tabish (Ahsan Khan), plan the murder of his wife, Beena (Urwa Hocane), after years of mistreating her with emotional and physical abuse.

Talk about femicide tends to focus on the individual man who kills a woman. Here, using Aap Ki Izzat as an example, I want to instead look at how the people and systems around Tabish create and support conditions that make killing women seem possible by enabling, allowing, and justifying patriarchal violence.

Two scenes in Aap Ki Izzat show this best: Chaudhry telling Tabish to have Beena killed, and Tabish asking his mother for permission to do it.

Tabish and Beena, both from simple families, get married young. Tabish first sees Beena while with his friend Hafiz (who, 14 years later, is also the only one who tries to stop him from killing his wife), sends a marriage proposal, and then marries her.

Deeply in love, young Beena turns herself into a symbol of service, selfless love, and family duty for Tabish and his family. Beena, who has a tense relationship with her mother-in-law, never reacts badly to any rude comments or demands from her; instead, Beena promises that she will treat her like her own mother.

When Tabish's sister gets married, he has no money for it. His new wife, Beena, gives her own dowry for the wedding. Later, when he tries to start a business, she cheers him up during his failures and even borrows money from her family to help him. He appreciates her sacrifices—until he gets rich.

After that, he starts seeing Beena's care not as love, but as something she owes him. He changes from a caring husband into a controlling man who thinks he owns her, and could even become her killer.

Even when Tabish was poor, he lived with the belief that men deserve certain rights. Beena's sacrifices were her duties as a wife, while his rare kindness was seen as big-hearted. When Beena gives up her own things—her dowry, her time, her work—and even things she doesn't have—borrowed money from her family—it's seen as her job as a good wife. But when Tabish gives Beena expensive gifts she doesn't need or want and easily afford, everyone, even her own mother, tells her to be thankful.

Tabish feels strong and manly because his wife is devoted to him and he has money. He has money, so he has power; he has a faithful wife, so he feels masculine. His wealth gives him material power, but Beena's loyalty makes his power look good and gives it value in society. The wrong idea is that his wife is loyal and devoted because he controls her.

But in a patriarchal system—a system where women have few choices and can't act freely—Beena's power in the relationship stays hidden and isn't valued.

Women choose safety over freedom—for Beena, Tabish gives her all the financial comforts and a safe home. She is not well-educated, has no job skills, and is socially weak—she has only one friend who is fairly poor, and her own family won't support her emotionally or with money.

Tabish thinks Beena's obedience comes from his natural authority, but really it comes from the limited options she has.

Beena's decision to leave Tabish, even though it seems illogical in her cultural and social setting, is her way of fighting back against the unfair and limiting patriarchal rules that strip her of power. By walking out on her husband, she shows him she values her dignity more than a false sense of security. She proves she has the strength that everyone assumed she lacked in a traditional marriage. Her choice to do what Tabish and those around her thought impossible takes away his power over her.

Tabish believes she has no place to go and no one to help her, which makes him think he can treat her badly without facing any consequences, so he grows bolder. His confidence comes not from his own strength, but from his belief that Beena is helpless.

Around the same time Tabish gains more money and status to control her and his household, he, his mother, and his sisters start mocking her weight and looks. In the give-and-take of marriage, her value as a wife and mother becomes worthless once he can afford to replace her duties—like finding a younger wife and better schools for the kids.

Because of patriarchal norms, everyone assumes Beena, with no other options, will stay obedient and keep playing her expected role, even as her work as a wife, mother, and daughter-in-law is seen as less valuable.

Everyone sees her unhappiness and how her hard work gets treated as unimportant and worthless. Everyone knows, but no one steps in because they all trust that marriage in a violent male-dominated society will work as expected: Tabish has power, so he does what he wants; Beena puts up with it because any other choice would cost her too much socially.

But when Beena decides to leave Tabish with the help of a vegetable seller, she flips the power order that Tabish depends on as a Pakistani man. She uses a kind of power that was not allowed to her as a traditional, good wife from a respected (shareef) family.

So Tabish, and everyone else’s anger, is not just about a betrayal in marriage—rather, they are all furious because’s Beena’s single act of refusing to tolerate the humiliation destroys all their power.

This pain shows in everyone’s shock and the repeated question, "Beena sabzi walay k sath bhag gai (Beena ran away with a vegetable vendor)?"

Honor is just another word for control; Tabish loses control over his wife, so he loses his honor. Since he loses honor, his money also drops in social worth. Despite being rich, his wife still chose a vegetable vendor over him. This challenges the order that his masculinity and power rely on. His wife, whom he sees as his property, rejected him for a much "lower" man. In the end, it is not his money that gives him power—it is the control over his wife’s body that makes him powerful in his community.

Tabish's anger at losing control over Beena shows in the way he talks about owning her. For example, he says, "I gave her more than she was worth." As a man, he had economic, social, and male power throughout their marriage.

 Later, his money gives him more choices and less responsibility. His financial support becomes a debt Beena must repay by obeying him and accepting shame. By leaving him, Beena refuses to take on that debt and pay its emotional cost.

When Beena left, she didn't take his money. She didn't take his children. She didn't take anything he owned. She didn't even argue or insult him with words. She just stopped letting him control her. He doesn't lose honor; he just loses control over his wife's body. Emotionally, Beena had already left. It's the loss of control over Beena's body that creates a crisis for Tabish.

Honor, instead of loss of control, becomes the excuse that justifies killing the wife. It gives Tabish permission to use violence to get back control and fix his damaged pride. By killing Beena, Tabish would show that he still controls her body and what happens to it. Killing the wife brings back the normal violent order where the man is in charge again.

Chaudhry and Tabish's mother — the only two people who have power over him — both openly and quietly support his decision to kill his wife, because his lost masculinity threatens the power structure they all benefit from.

Chaudhry has invested money in Tabish's political career, and he needs to restore the impression that he has control over his marriage and family. Chaudhry suggests that Tabish get Beena killed in a police encounter. Chaudhry does not just suggest murdering her; he proposes a form of violence that is disguised by society and institutions.

Tabish has the grievance; Chaudhry, someone with more power, teaches him how to avenge the damage to his masculinity and his power. He tells Tabish that killing Beena is the only way to save his honour. The police encounter makes the murder look legal or accidental, not like a case of domestic violence.

This murder in a police encounter clears Tabish and protects him. It gets rid of Beena's body and thereby gets rid of the sign of Tabish's damaged masculinity and loss of control. It changes the story so that his masculinity stays strong, because it hides the fact that his wife left him. It also removes the link between Tabish's masculinity and Beena's body.

This murder plot shows the male-dominated influences in social pressure, showing how other men and women back the idea that violence is a proper answer to a woman's disobedience.

Hafiz, Tabish's childhood friend, fails because he is the only one trying to talk Tabish out of killing Beena. Instead, Tabish reminds Hafiz of his social role by calling him beghairat (dishonourable) when Hafiz calls Beena his sister: "Yaar, tu kitna beghairat hai, ek ghar se bhagi hui larki ko behan keh raha hai (How dishonourable you are, calling a woman who ran away your sister)."

The systemic conditions that let men kill their wives focus on men's—especially rich men's—safety and sense of control, with honour-based violence supported by existing state and cultural systems.

The problem is not just that one man is violent. Rather, peers give the man socially recognizable tools to carry out the violence. They help protect him from both formal and informal types of accountability.

Tabish's mother lets him go ahead with the murder by staying silent. She is proud that Tabish never disobeys her, but she never puts him in a spot where he might disobey her; she never challenges him, never tells him if or when he is wrong. Under this choice is the worry that if she challenges him, he might still do what he wants and she will lose the illusion of her power. Since Tabish obeys her, everyone else in the family must obey her too.

Her power is built on the illusion of her power over Tabish. By questioning Tabish's power, she fears losing her own. Tabish asks her "Aap mujhay rok tau nahi rahin (You are not stopping me, are you)?" In response, she asks Tabish, "Mere roknay se ruk jao gay tum (Would you stop if I tell you to)?"

Would he stop if she tried to stop him? We will never know. But we have seen enough cases of murdered women to know that family members often choose to please and protect their sons rather than their daughters-in-law. The same is true for Beena. The mother chooses to stay away from Tabish's decision to kill Beena, instead of telling him not to commit the sin of murder.

She sees Beena as a real person with her own story. She knows that Beena is not just an unfaithful wife. She knows, like everyone else, that Beena was slowly pushed to her breaking point, and people expected her to keep tolerating more.

Even though she benefits from Beena's work and help at home, she tells Tabish, "You married her, you chose her, she's the mother of your kids, you decide."

She refuses to give back the care that Beena gave her, basically betraying her daughter-in-law.

This moment between Tabish and his mother avoids the simple idea that women are just victims of patriarchy. Instead, it shows how patriarchal systems can be kept going by women—especially women with power—who gain social benefits (like respect for mothers) by supporting male authority instead of questioning it.

She could challenge the hurtful ideas guiding her son, but she chooses not to use that power. She protects two things at once: his authority as a man in the house, and her own authority as his mother. Her silence when a murder partly depends on her permission is a denial of moral duty.

In the end, Tabish asks his mother to allow him to commit the sin, even though she has not stopped him. While Chaudhry gives Tabish a plan to kill without consequences, Hafiz makes Tabish see his wife's murder as a sin. But Tabish changes it into a necessary sin. The husband who first only wanted to punish his wife's mistake with divorce starts believing her murder is a required sin he must do.

In a few scenes in these episodes, Chaudhry and Tabish's mother help change Tabish from a harmful husband into a wife killer.

Beena survives in the end. But if she had died, who would be guilty for her murder? Tabish, because he decided to have her killed? The police, because they offered and did the killing for him? Chaudhry, because he showed Tabish that killing his wife was the only way to regain his pride and masculinity? Or Tabish's mother, whom he never disobeys, but who still chose not to tell him not to kill his wife?

A husband like Tabish may be the one who chooses to kill his wife. But that choice only becomes possible within a system that tells him he fully deserves his wife's unconditional love and service, that turns disobedience into an insult to his pride, that gives him the words to see his hurt as dishonor, and that builds services which help get revenge for his injury at the cost of a woman's life, and shows him that there are no consequences for the murder.

Also watch this :

'Love, jealousy, and possessiveness': Understanding the Gulbahar teaser with director Mehreen Jabbar