Its statistics are alarming, the spread global, the human cost staggering, but the problem of gender-based violence often lacks the consistent media spotlight it warrants. Violence against women and girls is a universal problem of epidemic proportions, but its human cost often remains invisible. Women around the world have been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. The abuser is usually someone known to the victim. When a woman wass alleged for having some relationship with any man, she was brought to Wadera-sain’s outaq. Life could bring her to two fates, whether someone would pay the price of her life and marry her or she will die in outaq working for bibisain – wife of the feudal. My father was educated and a responsible citizen of his town. Once he told me, “Dear son, I’m educating you so you take off the shackles of bowing down to feudalism that I am bound to.” I never realised it till one day my father received a call. Though I was younger, I was superior to my sisters because categorically I was the son and young blood. My father had got a call from a woman who asked him for my sister’s hand in marriage for her son (rishta). She told him that my sister had been in a relationship with her son for seven years and that she wanted to make her her daughter-in-law. That day my father was distressed and devastated. He told me and we inquired about the boy. He was a mere cleric in a rice mill. Despite the fact, we went to my sister and told her the real face of the guy. She urged us to make her marry him. On refusal from my father she took a rifle and tried shooting herself when I came in middle and slapped her and my father spat on her face. I regret the day I raised my hand on my sister. I turned her into a rebel and made her believe that I, being intellectually aware, assaulted her and she was not safe anymore within the boundaries of her father’s home. It was sheer domestic violence. Later, the boy started verbally harassing her and told her that he would spread pictures of her all over by wrong-means. Due to earlier mutilation and harassment at home she didn’t speak a word and secretly married him and left home in the dark night. I remember it was the 27th of Ramadan when she called and I apologised for what I had done. It was the last call from her some five years ago. I urged her to come back and told her that I’ll protect her; it was too late by then. She realised that she was in a wrong place. Her words haunt me when she said, “you have no right to protect me. I want to come back but you’ll kill me for the sake of honour.” – honour killing I see no way out for her to come back but I believe I can stop others to not do the same. The grief I hold is deep as of demise of a loved one. Every one in three women worldwide experience some sort of sexual harassment, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, honour killings and lose their life. We are no men if we don’t protect them, guide them, hold their hand, support them and share love with them. I leave my pen down with the desire to eliminate violence against women in the world by giving them equal strength, equal rights, freedom of speech and care as men that they deserve.