Pakistani police yesterday said a father shot dead his daughter after she refused to delete her TikTok account. In the Muslim-majority country, women can be subjected to violence by family members for not following strict rules on how to behave in public, including in online spaces.
“The girl’s father had asked her to delete her TikTok account. On refusal, he killed her,” a police spokesperson said.
Investigators said the father killed his 16-year-old daughter on Tuesday “for honor,” the police report said.
Photo: Reuters
The man was subsequently arrested.
The girl’s family initially tried to “portray the murder as a suicide” said police in Rawalpindi, where the attack happened. Last month, a 17-year-old female TikTok influencer with hundreds of thousands of online followers was killed at home by a man whose advances she had refused.
Sana Yousaf had racked up more than a million followers on social media accounts, including TikTok, where she shared videos of her favourite cafes, skincare products and traditional outfits.
TikTok is wildly popular in Pakistan, in part because of its accessibility to a population with low literacy levels. Women have found audience and income on the app, which is rare in a country where fewer than a quarter of the women participate in the formal economy.
However, only 30 percent of women in Pakistan own a smartphone, compared with twice as many men (58 percent), the largest gap in the world, the Mobile Gender Gap Report 2025 showed.
Pakistani telecommunications authorities have repeatedly blocked or threatened to block the app over what it calls “immoral behavior,” amid backlash against LGBTQ and sexual content.
In southwestern Balochistan, where tribal law governs many rural areas, a man confessed to orchestrating the murder of his 14-year-old daughter earlier this year over TikTok videos that he said compromised her “honor.”
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