PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The arrest of Hidayat Bibi underscores the reason why Pakistan’s president, General Pervez Musharraf, has moved to amend his country’s Islamic rape and adultery laws following pressure from rights activists and Western governments.

Last week, Pakistan’s ruling party tabled a bill to amend the laws, which place an almost impossible burden of proof on women in rape cases and expose victims to charges of adultery.

Hundreds of women have become increasingly brave in their public calls for a change to the laws. However, Islamists took to the streets last week to protest against the proposed bill, promising to defeat it. On January 18 last year, Hidayat Bibi, 45, was arrested under the Hudood ordinance after being accused of adultery by her former husband with whom she had a financial dispute.

The husband, claiming that the couple had not divorced, signed a police statement claiming that the man who leased her a house had “developed illicit relations with my wife, which is something immoral and un-Islamic.”

The police raided Hidayat Bibi’s house after the case was registered. “Five policemen with two policewomen entered our house at about 4 a.m. and after searching all the rooms they got me arrested,” she said.

Although under Islamic law four male witnesses are needed to prove a case of adultery, Hidayat Bibi was imprisoned in a jail in Peshawar with her 2-year-old daughter for three weeks. She was released after a medical examination proved that she had not had sexual intercourse in recent months. But the damage had already been done.

“I am sick with my life. Had I not had kids, I would have committed suicide,” she said. “All my relatives have severed ties with me. They treat me as inhuman. …The man who falsely accused me is still at large, and I was punished for my uncommitted crime.”

The new bill, dubbed the “Women Protection Bill,” proposes to transfer rape and adultery cases from the Islamic legal system to Pakistan’s British-influenced secular penal code.