Inside a modest home in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, the bedroom of 17-year-old TikToker Sana Yousaf remains frozen in time.
The paint is still stained where her blood splattered. Bullet holes scar the wall behind her bed.
Her parents sit quietly in the room, holding a phone filled with videos of their daughter dancing, singing, and smiling for the camera.
"I still can't believe it," her mother Farzana Yousaf tells the ABC.
"Even now I think maybe Sana is alive and has just gone to college … but she's gone."
Sana was killed in June by a man who police believe was stalking her after watching her TikTok videos.
Police say the 22-year-old suspect, Umar Hayat, broke into Sana's home, shot her twice in the chest, then fled.
Her mother and aunt were in the next room when it happened.
"I completely lost my senses," Mrs Yousaf says.
"My world ended."
Within a day, police arrested Hayat in the city of Faisalabad, about 320km south of Islamabad.
Police say he fled with her phone to destroy evidence but was caught with both the device and the weapon.
Authorities allege he killed Sana after she rejected his "offers of friendship".
Sana was a popular influencer originally from Chitral, in northern Pakistan. She had half a million Instagram followers before her death; her TikTok account has since surged to more than a million.
Her content was light-hearted: lip-syncing to songs, trying out fashion trends, hanging out with friends. Her last post was a montage celebrating her birthday.
"Everyone is working and earning [on social media] these days," her father Syed Yousaf Hassan says.
"You are not harming anyone. Why should that make you someone's enemy?"
Women targeted for social media use
Sana's murder has shocked Pakistan, but she is not the only woman who has been killed for her social media use.
In Quetta earlier this year, a father confessed to killing his 15-year-old daughter over her TikTok activity after initially claiming she'd been shot by strangers.
In 2021, TikTok star Muskan Sheikh and three colleagues were gunned down in Karachi. Police described it as a personal dispute — but public debate fixated on their content, widely branded "obscene".
That same year, content creator Ayesha Akram was assaulted by a mob of 400 men while filming at Lahore's Greater Iqbal Park on Independence Day. Footage of the assault went viral, but instead of condemning the attackers, much of the public blamed her for being there.
Activists say the killings are part of a larger pattern of violence against women in Pakistan.
"If the woman is making her own choices or trying to get out of [a man's] control, they will use violence," says prominent gender rights activist Farzana Bari.
"Independent women are seen as challenging their traditional power."
More than 700 women were murdered In the first six months of this year alone, about a quarter of them in so-called honour killings, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said.
More than 600 women were victims of sexual violence, more than 500 were kidnapped, and dozens were burnt or subjected to acid attacks.
And of the women who were murdered, at least eight were allegedly killed over their social media use.
These cases echo the fate of Qandeel Baloch, Pakistan's most famous social media star, who was strangled by her brother in 2016.
Although he was sentenced to life, he was acquitted in 2022 after their parents pardoned him — a stark reminder of how honour-crime laws allow perpetrators to escape justice.
Gendered disinformation rife online
The threats aren't limited to physical violence. Online platforms themselves have become hostile spaces for women.
After Sana's killing, the Digital Rights Foundation (DRF) analysed online comments and found many users glorified her murderer and framed her death as an inevitable consequence of her being online.
The DRF called it "gendered disinformation" — a narrative that shifts blame from perpetrators to victims by portraying women's visibility as immoral.
TikTok, which has more than 54 million users in Pakistan, has been banned repeatedly for "spreading obscenity".
While currently available, it operates under strict moderation and state-ordered takedowns. Critics say this feeds a culture of surveillance and hostility, particularly towards women.
"In a society which is very patriarchal — socially, culturally, politically — how do you expect that the space which will be created online will be free of the same threats and harassment women feel on the street?" Ms Bari said.
Calls for justice
Despite the backlash, Sana Yousaf's parents are defiant.
"Girls should be free," Mr Yousaf says.
"Listening to your heart is everyone's right. Working is everyone woman's right. Why should her desires be murdered?"
But without stronger protections, women like Ms Yousaf remain exposed. Her father agrees and says his daughter's killer — and those who defend him, must face justice.
"Nowhere does society, the law or Islam give permission to do this," he says.
"These people should be given the strictest punishment … they should be publicly hanged … they cannot be reasoned with."
