A court in Pakistan on Tuesday sentenced a man to death for murdering a teenage social media influencer after she rejected his repeated advances, in a verdict welcomed by the victim’s family and civil society groups.
The 22-year-old defendant was convicted of killing 17-year-old Sana Yousaf after allegedly stalking her repeatedly. The verdict can still be appealed.
According to police, the man broke into the teenager’s home in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and shot her in front of her mother.
The killing sparked outrage across Pakistan and renewed attention on gender-based violence in the country, where crimes against women remain a longstanding problem.
The victim, Sana Yousaf, who came from the remote north-western district of Chitral near the Afghan border, had more than 800,000 followers on TikTok and a substantial audience on Instagram.
In Pakistan, a country of more than 240 million people, violence against women remains a persistent problem.
A recent report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan documented a sharp rise in gender-based violence, including 3,815 rape cases and 983 gang-rape cases.
According to Amnesty International, 68 death sentences were handed down in Pakistan last year, mostly for murder, while no executions were carried out during the same period.
