It was supposed to be just another morning. Breakfast in the mountains. Families coming from afar—to sit by the river and unwrap food together. Some were taking photographs. Children played in the shallows. The water looked seemingly harmless––and familiar.
But then the river rose, like a warning you don’t want to believe. It crept in, quiet and steady. A threat disguised as a delay. Before they knew it, eighteen people stood marooned on a river rock that was shrinking beneath them, slowly but surely. Behind them, Swat’s picturesque mountains towered. In front, the river pulled closer.
Around them? Nothing. No sirens. No officials. No ropes. Just the sound of panic rippling louder than the current.
They stood there, clinging to each other. Surely, someone must be on their way. How could they not be?
But nothing came.
Not in ten minutes. Not in an hour. One by one, they were pulled away—by a river that gave no time, and a state that gave no answer. For over an hour, they held on. And the state did not.
To reduce this to God’s work is to blur the line between tragedy and failure. Yes, the river swelled. But aside from lackluster warnings, eyewitness accounts confirm a critical absence of precaution: no barriers, no enforced restrictions, and no timely rescue efforts. The result? A rising current turned into a death sentence.
Across the world, there is precedent—and principle—for holding the state accountable when it fails to protect. For instance, the Californian Supreme Court has held that flood-control agencies may be liable for damage caused by poorly maintained or inadequately designed river systems—especially where warning systems failed or barriers were missing. This principle, “inverse condemnation” is rooted in the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution.
Pakistan does not formally recognise the doctrine of inverse condemnation; the principle behind it—that the state must compensate individuals when public infrastructure fails and causes harm—is foreign to our legal system. The absence of this recognition has real and lasting consequences. Take the Attabad Lake disaster in Gilgit-Baltistan, which displaced thousands in 2010. Though it drew international attention, most survivors still await meaningful compensation or resettlement.
In the United States, inverse condemnation is deployed to hold the state liable when public projects damage private property. But where death, not property loss, occurs, American courts have had to rely on adjacent doctrines—wrongful death, state tort statutes, or constitutional claims—to fill that gap. Ironically, Pakistan offers the reverse. Our Constitution directly protects life and dignity under Articles 9 and 14. Yet, it fails to offer any formal remedy when those rights are violated.
In cases like Shehla Zia and Asghar Leghari, Pakistani courts have consistently recognised the state’s duty to act in the face of foreseeable risk—whether environmental, infrastructural, or administrative. What remains absent is a clear compensatory framework when that duty is breached. While Pakistani courts have at times awarded compensation through invoking their constitutional jurisdiction, such outcomes remain rare and discretionary.
Otherwise, Pakistan relies on ad hoc, discretionary compensation regimes typically announced by politicians or local governments after public tragedies, but this is neither legally guaranteed or enforceable.
It is time Pakistan formally acknowledges that where lives are lost due to preventable state inaction, there must be legal consequence. The law must not only mourn the dead, it must provide for the living. Whether through judicial expansion of constitutional torts or legislative reform, the duty to protect must carry with it the duty to compensate.
A clear framework could provide structured remedies for victims of state inaction. Such a compensatory framework would not only quantify damages but also define thresholds of state responsibility, cutting into the deeper questions: When the state fails, what happens next? Who investigates, who pays, and who reforms? Absent this, each disaster becomes an isolated sorrow—untethered from any promise of change—and waiting to repeat itself.
Granted, conversations are still to be had—about personal risk and individual contributing acts. Perhaps some of those on the rocks should never have been in the river to begin with. But that is a conversation best left for later. First, the state must get its house in order.
In the face of systemic failure—when no warning is heard, no rope is thrown, no hand is extended—the burden of responsibility cannot rest on those who were left clinging to each other upon a shrinking rock, silently and desperately waiting. As the water rose, the world watched— and the state turned away. If the law does not look back now, it never truly will.
