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A harrowing video of a young woman being violently attacked on Mozang Link Road in Lahore on Thursday has triggered an eruption of fury online, with netizens expressing shock and revulsion over the incident.

The attacker, identified as Ghulam Mustafa, was tracked down and arrested with the help of data from dozens of Punjab Safe Cities Authority (PSCA) cameras.

Surveillance footage captured the suspect pulling his motorcycle directly in front of the young woman’s scooty on the busy road before launching a vicious physical assault in full view of passersby. Initial police reports indicate the woman sustained severe facial trauma, including a fractured nasal bone, during the attack.

While the violence itself is deeply disturbing — the attacker dragging the woman by her hair and beating her mercilessly — netizens reserved their strongest reactions for the onlookers who didn’t intervene sooner.

One user on X called out the onlookers who stood by without doing anything, saying the “men who were just standing there should be ashamed”. “[Is] their masculinity only for women?”

“A man beats a random girl for no reason for 6-7 secs, multiple men standing a foot away yet no one bothers to stop him,” commented another, highlighting how many argue that men are supposed to be “protectors”, yet no man stepped forward to protect the woman being attacked.

One person pointed out the lasting psychological toll of the attack, saying the woman is likely to lose her confidence for a long time.

“Imagine just going out on your scooty as a girl in this country and coming home with a broken nose because aik admi ko rasta nahi mil raha tha (a man couldn’t get through traffic) so he decided to beat you up,” wrote another.

According to one user, even if the attacker believed he was targeting a man, that still does not justify nor excuse the attack.

“When there’s no fear of punishment, such incidents will keep happening,” they wrote.

While the suspect now faces a criminal case, the incident is bound to leave a scar far deeper than the victim’s fractured nose. It’s no secret that it’s difficult to navigate public spaces as a woman in Pakistan, and as a woman driver it’s doubly difficult.

It wasn’t long ago that former federal minister Fawad Chaudhry openly suggested women shouldn’t drive scooters because “girls are horrible drivers”. That kind of rhetoric has consequences. It shapes how society views women on the road and, in worse cases, it has the tendency to lend legitimacy to the toxic mindset of a man who thinks he can ruthlessly beat up a woman for not giving him way.