Pakistan, Aug. 12 -- A young woman has lost her life on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad because a group of men, one of them a policeman off-duty, decided that policing private lives was their prerogative. On Saturday, a charged mob stopped a parked Mehran, beat the man inside, and terrorised Fakhra Amjad into running.

In her panic, she fell over a hundred feet into a ravine and died en route to the hospital. The police arrested the survivor, promising to search for the rest of the perpetrators, but as expected, it doesn't take much intellect to predict the unfolding course of this case.

Daring to dismantle the script, these pages wish to remind everyone that moral policing is merely a euphemism for extortion with theatrics. The formula is...