Pakistan police on Friday said a father shot and killed his daughter after she refused to delete her account on the popular video-sharing app TikTok.
In the Muslim-majority country, women are often subjected to violence by family members for not adhering to strict expectations regarding public behavior, including activity in online spaces.
“The girl’s father had asked her to delete her TikTok account. On refusal, he killed her,” a police spokesperson told AFP.
According to a police report shared with AFP, investigators said the father killed his 16-year-old daughter on Tuesday “for honour.” He was subsequently arrested.
The victim’s family initially attempted to portray the murder as a suicide, according to police in the city of Rawalpindi, where the incident occurred, near the capital, Islamabad.
Last month, a 17-year-old girl and TikTok influencer with hundreds of thousands of online followers was killed at home by a man whose romantic advances she had rejected.
Sana Yousaf had gained more than a million followers across her social media accounts, including TikTok, where she posted videos featuring her favourite cafes, skincare products, and traditional outfits.
TikTok is wildly popular in Pakistan, partly due to its accessibility to a population with low literacy rates.
Women have found both an audience and a source of income on the app—an uncommon opportunity in a country where fewer than one-quarter of women participate in the formal workforce.
However, only 30 percent of women in Pakistan own a smartphone, compared to 58 percent of men—the largest gender gap in mobile phone ownership worldwide, according to the Mobile Gender Gap Report of 2025.
Pakistani telecommunications authorities have repeatedly blocked or threatened to block TikTok, citing concerns over “immoral behaviour,” particularly in response to LGBTQ content and sexual themes.
In southwestern Balochistan, where tribal law still governs many rural communities, a man confessed earlier this year to orchestrating the murder of his 14-year-old daughter over TikTok videos he believed had compromised her “honour.”
