For Saba Qamar, working on upcoming legal drama Case No. 9 was like ‘magic’
"I’ve grown, I’ve learned, and above all, I’ve felt truly seen," the actor wrote in a note shared on Instagram.
The first look of Saba Qamar’s upcoming legal drama Case No. 9 is out and it looks like an intense reflection of a very real problem in our society. In the show, Qamar plays Sehar Moazzam, a woman who has been raped and is in search of justice.
The show stars Faysal Quraishi as her rapist, Gohar Rasheed as a sneaky looking policeman and Aamina Sheikh as her lawyer. Junaid Khan, Rushna Khan, Hina Khawaja Bayat, Noorul Hassan, Navin Waqar, Azra Mohyeddin, Ali Rehman Khan, Shahnawaz Zaidi, Ahmed Randhawa, Zohreh Amir, Mizna Waqas, Kamran Jeelani and Faiza Gillani also feature in the show.
The teaser, released on Thursday evening, gives us a quick snapshot of the show, which has been written by journalist Shahzeb Khanzada, but it’s more than enough for us to understand exactly what it’s about. “Women lose these cases not because of lack of evidence, but lack of courage,” says Qamar as flashes of her lying on the ground are shown.
“A story that has never been told before of a crime that happens every day! She fought for justice, unaware that her true battle was with the system itself!” reads the caption of the teaser.
The video features a short preview of a story we know all too well — a woman is raped, she approaches the authorities and her uphill battle for justice begins. Interspersed in the video are lines that many have heard before, like “‘What will people say’ — this one sentence has deprived thousands of rape victims of justice.”
“It’s a shortcut — accuse a rich man of rape and get rich,” Quraishi says on screen, a few scenes after his character is shown assaulting Qamar.
“You should be ashamed of yourself, do you not have a mother or sister at home?” Qamar asks a lawyer, purportedly her rapist’s legal counsel, in one clip. “Of course I do, but they’re not like you,” he replies smugly, echoing the many, many victim-blaming comments that often surface after incidents of rape or violence against women surface.
Another line hit quite close to home — “Once words leave your tongue, they’re like arrows released from a bow.” In a society that grapples with victim-blaming and shaming, lines like this hold even more weight. Just recently, rapper Ali Gul Pir and actor Nadia Hussain called out netizens who were blaming content creator Samiya Hijab’s alleged kidnapping attempt.
The show has been created by 7th Sky Entertainment for Geo Entertainment. It has been produced by Abdullah Kadwani and Asad Qureshi, and directed by Syed Wajahat Hussain. We don’t have a release date yet, but we’re looking forward to this one — with an actor like Qamar leading the drama, we know it’s going to be good.