Karachi: Zahida Elyas looks every inch the demure Muslim woman. Then her eyes flash and her jaw hardens as she recounts how she was beaten dozens of times, saw her husband take away their five young daughters, divorce her without telling her and leave her with nothing, least of all her dignity and confidence.

Zahida, 32, said. "The police, courts, they're all on the men's side. No one listens to us."

With divorce and domestic violence on the rise in Pakistan, all too often women are dealt a doubly bad hand, family experts say. Women have little say when the man wants out, yet little way to leave if he's abusive and wants to keep her put. Although statistics are difficult to come by, the Aurat Foundation, which tracks women's issues, found 608 police reports of domestic violence in 2009, compared with 281 in 2008. Experts say most cases go unreported. Violence in marriages may be as high as 90 per cent, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says, with most women unaware they're being abused.

On paper, Pakistani family law is among the more progressive in the Islamic world, although there's still no statute on domestic violence. But corruption, weak implementation, patriarchal thinking and legal gaps often leave men holding all the cards.

When Zahida married her husband, Mohammad, a distant relative, in Lahore in 1999, she saw a bright future, she said. She dreamed of a loving household filled with happy children.

They had three daughters in rapid succession. When Mohammad lost his sales job in 2004, his parents stepped in to support him. He started beating her, she said, blaming her for not having a boy. Her mother-in-law also abused her, she said, at one point kicking her so hard she had a miscarriage. In 2004, they had a boy, Saim. But things only got worse, probably because, she said, her husband now had an heir and didn't need her.

Shortly after their sixth child was born last summer, Mohammad moved out and went to live with his parents. In September, when she went to ask for rent money, she said, he emerged with a pair of scissors and slashed her wrist. She started attending a teaching workshop. With no money for babysitters, she would leave their infant daughter with her in-laws. One day in October, she arrived at the house to find her husband, in-laws and five daughters gone, his parents' house shuttered. She still has her son, who was in a different school when her husband made his getaway, she said.

She discovered several months later that her husband had filed for divorce. She eventually learned where her husband was living and tried to see her daughters but he beat her again, she said. Her husband's lawyer has told her that the family will get custody of the boy legally, she said. Mohammad reached by telephone, said he was divorced under civil and Islamic law, with all procedures followed.

"I never beat her, was only unemployed for a year and even then gave her $50 (Dh183) a month," he said.