Police have filed a murder case against an unidentified suspect after 17-year-old social media influencer Sana Yousaf was shot dead in her house in Islamabad, it emerged on Tuesday.
The first information report (FIR) was registered at the Sumbal police station on Monday evening on the complaint of Sana’s mother, Farzana Yousaf, and invoked Section 302 (intentional murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).
The 17-year-old was well-known for her social media activities, with nearly 800,000 followers on her TikTok account and almost 500,000 on her Instagram account.
In the FIR, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, the mother said that a man with a pistol in his hand entered their house suddenly at around 5pm and “shot straight at my daughter with the intention to kill”.
She added that two shots struck Sana in her chest, injuring her severely. The girl was taken to a hospital but she had succumbed to her wounds, the FIR added.
The mother described the suspect as having a “smart appearance, moderate physique and height”, and dressed in a black shirt and pants. She asserted that she and her sister-in-law, Lateefa Shah, were eyewitnesses to the incident and could identify the suspect if they saw him in person.
Farzana detailed that her 15-year-old son was not present at the house as he had gone to their native village in Upper Chitral, while her sister-in-law was visiting them for a few days.
In January, a man who recently brought his family back to Quetta from the United States confessed to shooting his 15-year-old daughter dead, motivated by his disapproval of her TikTok content, according to police.
The same month, two TikToker men died in separate incidents in Lahore after their pistols went off accidentally in Lahore.
More than 54 million people use TikTok in Pakistan, with authorities blocking the video-sharing app several times in recent years over content deemed objectionable.
The platform was banned four times in 2021 alone. It is currently accessible, with stringent moderation in place and complying with requests to remove certain content.
