Who was Sana Yousaf, Pakistani TikTok star shot dead by a gunman?

Yahoo

3 days ago

Police in Pakistan's capital Islamabad have arrested a man accused of murdering a 17-year-old social media influencer, Sana Yousaf.
Yousaf, who had hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and Instagram, was shot dead at her home on Monday, the latest high-profile instance of suspected femicide in Pakistan.
Local media reported that Yousaf was shot dead at her home in Islamabad at about 5pm (12:00 GMT), according to a police report filed by Yousaf's mother, Farzana Yousaf, seen by Pakistani news outlet, Dawn.
The report added that Yousaf was shot twice in her chest and was taken to a hospital but died of her injuries.
Yousaf was a social media influencer, originally from Chitral, a city about 400km (250 miles) north of Islamabad.
As of Wednesday, her TikTok account had 1.1 million followers. She often posted videos of herself lip syncing to songs. The last video posted on her account is a montage of her celebrating her birthday with her friends.
On Tuesday, Yousaf was buried in her ancestral graveyard in Chitral's Chuinj village, according to Dawn.
On Tuesday, Syed Ali Nasir Rizvi, Islamabad's inspector general of police (IGP), told a media briefing that the police had arrested a suspect from Faisalabad, a city about 320km (200 miles) south of Islamabad, within 20 hours of the murder.
'The accused is a 22-year-old unemployed man who repeatedly attempted to contact the victim. Upon her refusal to respond, he committed the murder,' said Rizvi.
He added that the suspect took Yousaf's phone with him to 'destroy evidence', but that police had seized her phone as well as the murder weapon from the suspect.
Dawn reported, quoting unnamed sources close to the investigation, that the suspect and Yousaf had known each other for one year. The suspect had travelled to Islamabad between May 28 and 29 to wish Yousaf well on her birthday, but the two could not meet, for unspecified reasons.
The suspect and Yousaf then spoke by phone and decided to meet on June 2. When the suspect reached Yousaf's house, she did not come out. However, he still managed to enter and an argument ensued, escalating into Yousaf's murder.
Yousaf's parents were not at home when the murder took place, but her aunt was present.
The National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW), a statutory body established to examine government policies affecting women, has demanded a detailed investigation into the crime.
'We will not let this case be buried under social stigma, false narratives of honour, or procedural loopholes. This senseless killing highlights the vulnerability of women and girls, even in their own homes. We demand justice for Sana and her family, and expect the state to ensure accountability of the perpetrators,' said NCSW chairperson Ume Laila Azhar.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi confirmed the suspect's arrest in an X post on Tuesday. 'Police has recovered the pistol and the i phone [iPhone] of the deceased girl and accused has confessed the murder as well,' he wrote. Al Jazeera has not been able to independently confirm whether the suspect has confessed to killing Yousaf.
Aurat March, the feminist group which organises Pakistan's largest annual women's march in multiple cities – usually coinciding with International Women's Day on March 8 – posted a statement on Tuesday. 'We, the Aurat March chapters across the country, demand justice for Sana a 17-year-old girl and TikToker who tragically lost her life to patriarchal violence,' the account wrote in the caption.
'Patriarchy feels most threatened when women & gender minorities claim voice and visibility in public by challenging the stand pat norms. In response, it turns to violence the ultimate tool to silence, control, and erase.
'This is exactly what happened to Sana who was killed inside her own home by a violent man who couldn't take no for an answer. This wasn't a random hit, this was a planned attack where a minor girl's privacy and home were invaded by a man who thought he would get away with it.'
Actor Mahira Khan also posted a story on Instagram, sharing the news of Yousaf's murder. 'Disgusted to the core,' Khan wrote in the caption.
In recent years, several incidents have occurred involving young women being subject to violent crimes at the hands of men they know. Many of these women also had a social media presence on platforms such as TikTok.
'Sana Yousaf's murder is part of a horrifying, ongoing pattern of violence against women in Pakistan, especially those who dare to exist with autonomy,' Nighat Dad, the executive director of a nongovernmental, research-based advocacy organisation, Digital Rights Foundation, told Al Jazeera. 'These are not isolated incidents. What connects them is a culture where women are punished for visibility, independence, and saying no.
'At the heart of this pattern is fragile masculinity and deeply rooted misogyny. When young women assert boundaries or say no to romantic or sexual advances, it bruises the male ego, especially in a society that teaches men entitlement over women's bodies and choices. This entitlement, when left unchecked by law, culture, and platforms, turns deadly,' Dad added.
On January 28, a man named Anwar ul-Haq was charged with murder after he confessed to shooting his 14-year-old daughter Hira Anwar in Quetta, a city in Pakistan's southwest. The man, who had recently moved his family back to Pakistan from the US, told the police he found TikTok videos made by his daughter 'objectionable'. His daughter had been posting videos to the social platform before she had moved to Pakistan with her family.
In October 2024, police in Pakistan's southern city Karachi said they had arrested a man for killing four members of his family. The four women, aged 60, 21, 20, 20 and 12 were found with slit throats in separate rooms of their apartment, according to the police.
In 2022, Pakistani American woman Sania Khan was 29 when she was shot and killed by her former husband, Raheel Ahmad, in Chicago after she had posted about her divorce on her TikTok account. When the police arrived, Ahmad, 36 at the time, shot himself with the gun he used to kill Khan.
Possibly the most high-profile murder case of a Pakistani woman took place in 2016, when social media star Qandeel Baloch was killed by her brother when she was 26 years old.
'Women who are visible online, particularly those who challenge social norms or exist outside the mold of respectability politics, face disproportionate abuse and threats,' Dad said. 'The backlash isn't just digital, it's physical. When platforms fail to act against hate and harassment, they enable a culture where violence becomes the consequence of women simply being seen and heard.'
In all, 346 women in Pakistan were killed in 2024 in the name of 'honour', up from 324 in 2023, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).
But this statistic likely does not include cases like Yousaf's, where the accused man is not from the victim's family and committed murder after his advances were rejected.
In July 2021, 27-year-old Noor Mukadam was killed in Islamabad by Zahir Jaffar, whose family was known to Mukadam's. In 2022, a judge sentenced Jaffar to death for the rape, murder and beheading of Mukadam. Last week, Pakistan's Supreme Court upheld Jaffar's death penalty.
'We need systemic change. The state must treat online misogyny and gender-based violence as connected threats and not separate issues,' Dad said. 'When a woman says no, and a man responds with violence, that's not heartbreak, it's abuse.'