Sobbing lawyers dressed in black blazers, leading politicians, intellectuals and activists joined more than 3,000 citizens flooding Lahore's Gaddafi Stadium as Pakistan bid farewell to its top rights advocate Asma Jahangir on Tuesday. Jahangir passed away at the age of 66 after suffering a cardiac arrest on Sunday.

Camera drones flew overhead as mourners accompanied the body with flowers and wreaths. Thousands of mourners cramming into the Gaddafi cricket ground under tight security to grieve the lawyer described by many as the country's “moral compass”.

Women could be seen in the front row and throughout the crowd during the funeral prayers, highly unusual in Pakistan, where the genders are often segregated for prayers and social events, but symbolic of Jahangir's leadership in the long battle for women's rights.

“Asma's death has created a wide gap that looks to be never filled,” one attendee, college teacher Said Raheem Ul Haque, told AFP as the service began.