KARACHI: Dr. Summaiya Syed has faced many hardships, including sexual and psychological harassment, during a decades-long career as a police medical examiner in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province.
But the difficulties have all paid off.
In June last year, Syed was appointed the top police surgeon in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, heading a medico-legal department in which she has herself seen many ups and downs in a career spanning almost 30 years.
Today, her message for other women on International Women’s Day is simple: “Don’t give up.”
“Giving up was not, never an option for me, never an option,” Syed, 50, told Arab News in an interview in Karachi.
“I have faced my own share of threats, my own share of blackmailings, my own share of physical harassment, sexual harassment, psychological harassment ... I’ve faced it all, as a woman medico-legal officer, as a senior woman medico-legal officer, as [an] additional police surgeon.”
This picture taken in Karachi, Pakistan, on March 7, 2023, captures a list of names that mentions the previous occupants of Dr Summaiya Syed’s office, showing the top medico-legal officials in the city were mostly men in the past. The only woman appointed to the post in December 2015 spent only 17 days on the job, making Syed the longest-serving woman police surgeon in Karachi. (AN Photo)
Syed qualified as a doctor in 1996 and joined the Sindh health department as a “medico-legal officer,” the term for a medical examiner who conducts autopsies and investigates the cause and manner of death and injuries at government hospitals.
It was a profession few women chose at the time but Syed says she has never looked back.
Before Syed, only one other woman was appointed the police surgeon in Karachi, in December 2015, but spent only 17 days on the job, making Syed the longest-serving woman police surgeon in Karachi. Now, among her aims as a leader in her field is to fix gender imbalances in the medico-legal department as well as the health industry in general.
Karachi, a city of over 15 million people, currently has only 29 medico-legal officers, of which just seven are women, a figure Syed said was “not at all compatible” with the number of women victims of assault.
Last year, health facilities reported 626 cases of sexual assault on women and children. Among over 34,000 people who were brought to the police for examination in various cases, 5,325 were women.
“We are getting around 20 cases of women and children per day [at Abbasi Shaheed hospital], maybe one or two female dead bodies as well,” Syed said, referring to one of Karachi’s largest public hospitals.
“But I just have one WMLO [woman medico-legal officer] over there. So that is not at all compatible.”
One way in which Syed tries to tackle the problem is by making her department more accessible, especially by being available herself through social media.
“People contact me out of the blue that their case is not being addressed or they’re waiting for some kind of, you know, treatment or medical legal documentation, they contact me directly,” she said.
“We are not turning away women who don’t come with police letters, we don’t turn back children whose parents are not bringing police letters.”
And under Syed, the Karachi police medico-legal department has also started assessing victims of sexual assaults based on their psychological condition, which was not practiced previously.
According to Syed, sexual assault affects all three modalities — physical, sexual and psychological — of a victim.
“We only were previously concerned with sexual [trauma], but now we talk about physical injuries as well,” she said. “And we talk about psychological trauma.”
Anti-rape crisis cells set up by the Sindh government last year to provide medico-legal certificates, psychological support and legal services to sexual abuse victims would now have a full-time psychologist available for trauma victims, Syed said, including those who had been through “intimate partner violence,” which involves physical and sexual violence, stalking and psychological aggression by a spouse.
“This was a groundbreaking thing,” Syed said. “And I’m extremely proud to have been a part of it.”
Along her journey, the doctor said, she was supported by family, especially her father and husband.
And though she was thankful for this, she added:
“Even if the men in your life are not allowing you to fly, you should still fly.”
In her office, a poster hanging on the wall read: “Don’t make me walk when I want to fly.”
