The Daily Inside

Mehrab Khalid, a second-year Film & TV student at the National College of Arts (NCA) and a young man from Turbat, Balochistan, has reportedly been missing since May 29. Weeks later, his family, classmates and fellow students are still asking the same question: Where is Mehrab Khalid?

A society can survive poverty, inflation and political instability. What it cannot survive is fear. The foundation of any free country is the ability of its citizens to think, speak, create and live without worrying that they may simply disappear. When a young student vanishes and no answers follow, it raises questions far bigger than one individual case.

Mehrab was not a criminal, nor was he carrying a weapon. He was a filmmaking student at the most prestigious art school, pursuing a creative career and a future in storytelling. Yet today, instead of discussing his journey from a poverty-stricken province into the world of film, people are sharing missing-person posters and demanding information about his whereabouts.

What makes this case even more disturbing is the apparent silence surrounding it, especially from the institution where he was studying. NCA is not just another university; it is an institution that markets itself as a home for artists, thinkers, filmmakers and free expression. If an art school cannot speak up when one of its own students disappears, then what exactly does it stand for?

Students are increasingly questioning why stronger public statements have not been made and why the institution appears more comfortable protecting its image than demanding answers for one of its own. Many are asking what powerful forces have rendered it spineless.

An institution that teaches art but remains silent when its students need solidarity risks betraying the very values it claims to represent. Art without courage are merely decoration. Creativity without freedom is performance. NCA’s complacent response deserves as much scrutiny as the disappearance itself.

Regardless of politics, one fact remains: a young student is missing, and his family deserves answers. Until those answers are provided, the question will remain:

Where is Mehrab Khalid?

Let’s be blunt. Maqsood Chaprasi was supposed to be the crack in the armor of Shehbaz Sharif’s empire! A peon turned frontman. A man earning twenty-five thousand rupees a month who somehow had billions flowing through his account. His name sat right there in the FIA’s investigation: 28 benami accounts, Rs 16.3 billion laundered, Shehbaz Sharif and sons listed as the principal accused.

Then one day, Maqsood died. “Cardiac arrest,” they said. In the UAE. No autopsy. No investigation. Just a convenient ending that cleaned the slate. What should have been a headline about justice became a footnote about silence.

But Maqsood wasn’t the only one. Dr. Rizwan — the FIA investigator who built the very case — also died suddenly at 47. The official cause? Heart attack. The same phrase recycled to explain away another inconvenient death.

Two key figures gone before the trial could even begin. That’s not coincidence. That’s a pattern.

The case existed. The evidence existed. The witnesses existed. But the minute those witnesses started dropping, so did the heat. The FIA’s corruption case quietly faded. The accused stayed in power.

It’s not just about Shehbaz Sharif — it’s about us. A country that keeps forgetting its own crimes. A nation that claps when a man accused of laundering billions talks about “saving the economy.”

We forget because it’s easier. Because remembering hurts. Because calling a murderer a murderer might make us unsafe. Because we’ve been taught that “stability” matters more than truth. We’ve been taught to trade conscience for convenience.

But when Maqsood Chaprasi and Dr. Rizwan died, something in us died too, our will to question, our hunger for justice, our ability to say “this isn’t normal.”

The man who should’ve stood trial walks free. The men who could’ve told the story are gone. And the rest of us just kept moving, pretending not to notice.

If that doesn’t haunt you, maybe we deserve this silence. Because when we stop remembering, they stop fearing. And when they stop fearing, corruption becomes culture.

Justice delayed isn’t justice denied in Pakistan, justice is just forgotten.

Not only are they authoritarian in their thinking, they are often hypocrites and cowards too.

A person with no consistent moral standard is far more dangerous than the people they claim to oppose. They speak loudly about injustice abroad, but suddenly find excuses, silence, and “bad timing” when injustice happens at home.

And the funny part? You don’t have to look far to find them. They may be among your friends, your colleagues, or even your family. In reality, most fall into one of three categories: the uninformed, the hypocrites, or those cowards who benefit from the status quo and fear any change that might threaten their comfort.

And then there is a fourth category: those suffering from a chronic case of bughz-e-Imran. For them, facts become optional, suffering becomes invisible, consistency disappears, and somehow every problem in Pakistan traces back to Imran Khan. Inflation? Khan. Censorship? Khan. Governance failures? Khan. Bad weather? Khan. Their birth? Probably Khan too.

Their favorite line is: “Pakistan is healing.” No matter what is happening on the ground, the script remains the same.

A disturbing harassment case from Naran has gone viral across Pakistani social media after videos surfaced showing a man allegedly following, filming, and harassing women visiting the tourist area. The clips quickly spread online after activist and PTI party supporter Faizan Riaz publicly called on KP Police to identify the suspect and take strict legal action.

Soon after the outrage exploded online, reports emerged that the man had been arrested by Police and later issued a public apology. Social media users sarcastically joked that his “software got updated,” turning the phrase into a viral meme across X and TikTok. While many people mocked the suspect online, others argued that the incident exposed a much deeper and uglier reality inside Pakistani society.

For countless women in Pakistan, harassment is not some shocking one-time event. Catcalling, staring, filming women without consent, inappropriate touching, following women in public places, and victim blaming are things many women deal with almost daily. The saddest part is that society often questions the victim before questioning the man involved. “Why was she alone?” “Why was she dressed like that?” “Didn’t she know how men are?” These are the kinds of responses women constantly hear instead of clear condemnation of harassment itself.

Critics online say a dangerous mentality still exists in parts of society where some men wrongly assume that if a woman dresses differently, travels alone, or appears independent, she is somehow “available” or deserves harassment. Many women also pointed out that this case only became national news because it went viral through social media activism. Otherwise, similar incidents happen every single day across Pakistan without attention, accountability, or justice.

The incident has once again sparked debate around women’s safety, toxic masculinity, victim blaming, and the role social media now plays in exposing behavior that often goes ignored in everyday life.

The biggest problem with Pakistan is that corruption is no longer limited to politicians, it has infected the entire structure. From sections of media to institutions, police, religious opportunists, and power circles, too many people have normalized hypocrisy, propaganda, oppression, and injustice as if it is just part of everyday life. In any society with strong moral standards, revelations this serious would shake the entire country. In Pakistan, people move on in 24 hours while the same faces continue lecturing the public.

The cipher controversy exposed something deeper than politics. For years, journalists and TV analysts mocked people for even believing foreign interference was possible. Some outright denied the cipher existed. Others, including figures like Mansoor Ali Khan and Najam Sethi, dismissed it as “drama” or a “conspiracy theory.”

But now that documents and discussions have resurfaced publicly, the same people are no longer denying it. Instead, they are shifting the argument. “These kinds of ciphers are normal.” “It was low level diplomacy.” “It had nothing to do with regime change.” Maybe that sounds normal only in a country where people have become numb to humiliation and foreign pressure.

Because the question is still simple: if the United States was openly unhappy with Imran Khan, discussions around a vote of no confidence took place in the cypher and then the vote of no confidence removed him, how are people pretending that sequence means absolutely nothing?

And this is why many Pakistanis are furious with sections of the media today. Netizens are resharing old clips of journalists who confidently dismissed the cipher story for years. Critics online are now questioning the credibility and integrity of several media figures, arguing that instead of holding power accountable, many acted like propagandists protecting the status quo.

Whether people agree with Khan politically or not, one thing has become impossible to ignore: the conversation around the cipher has changed completely, and many of the people who once mocked it are now struggling to explain their old positions.

The curious case of Pakistan’s patwaris and elite fascist mindset is that even after the cipher revelations, many still refuse to ask why a foreign power was interfering in Pakistan’s government to remove an elected Prime Minister.

First they called it a conspiracy theory. Now they say the cipher should never have been revealed. But the real treason is not exposing foreign pressure. The real treason is allegedly conspiring against your own elected government.

And please stop pretending Pakistan suddenly became “important globally.” From Ayub to Zia to Musharraf, Pakistan has long served Western imperial interests. That’s nothing new.

A 73 year old man sitting illegally in a small prison cell that feels like an oven during summers, a former Prime Minister and the greatest sportsman in cricket history, dealing with worsening health and vision issues, separated, isolated, pressured, and blackmailed from every direction, yet still refusing to bow down.

“They dream of seeing me afraid, but that dream will remain unfulfilled.”

That is what makes Imran Khan different. Few men enter history the way he did or achieve what he was able to achieve. After more than 1000 days behind bars, they still cannot break his spirit, because a man who truly believes in La ilaha illallah (there is no God but One) does not easily surrender before power, pressure, or fear.

And now even the cipher revelations are further cementing what many Pakistanis already believed: his removal was never about inflation, corruption, or “saving democracy,” but about toppling it to satisfy foreign interests. More and more people, not just in Pakistan but around the world, are beginning to understand why Khan was targeted. He refused to become a puppet and refused to compromise on an independent path for Pakistan.

History is full of people who refused to compromise with oppression or unjust systems. From Imam Hussain standing against Yazid, to Nelson Mandela refusing to bow before apartheid, to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X challenging the systems around them, real leaders do not surrender easily. Politicians compromise for survival. Leaders stand firm for what they believe in, no matter the cost. That is what separates Khan from the rest.

Despite keeping him locked away, they are still rewriting laws, reshaping the political system, changing election rules, and engineering everything around one man. That alone tells you how deeply they fear him. A lion in a cage still terrifies the dogs outside.