Filicide in Layyah

A cook-turned-labourer poisoned five of his children to death and himself because he could no longer feed them

Extreme poverty is not as silent a killer as we imagine it to be. It drives both men and women to the depths of despair and the society at large is left angst-ridden and scarred by what it ought to have done but didn’t. Thursday’s infanticide in Layyah ripped at the heartstrings of every Pakistani, especially those who pride themselves on their spirit of philantrophy. A down and out cook-turned-labourer poisoned five of his children to death and himself because he realised he could no longer feed them. The children, aged between 6 and 12, were murdered twice. The first time by their mother who abandoned them some time before their deaths, forcing the father to quit his job as a cook in Lahore and move back to his hometown to raise his children alone. But on a day-labourer’s salary it was always going to be a struggle.

In the eyes of the law it will be the parents of the children who will be blamed the most for the deaths. It is almost certain that fingers will not be pointed at the state and the clerics who are unable to convince people to restrict the size of their families.

State-backed family planning efforts are much touted, but the reality is that even the reduction in fertility rates from over 6 in in 1990 to 3.6 in 2014 has more to do with education and women entering the workforce than with government efforts to encourage birth control methods. While the Chinese one-child route may be unconstitutional, the Iranian model, which can also be referred to as a ‘think before you act’ model, is still workable. Old wives tales about large families made way for new world facts regarding responsible child rearing. All it involves is easy access to contraception, and frank advice on why small families directly correlate with upward economic mobility.

And while smaller families are not a guarantee of economic mobility, they can certainly handle shocks better. It’s a lot easier for a family on zero or reduced income to keep running a one-child house than a five-child house.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 29^th, 2017.

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