Popular Pakistani TikTok Star Shamso Bibi Shot Dead
Bibi had been posting on TikTok for roughly three to four years and had built an audience of about 1.3 million followers
A popular TikTok star with 1.3 million followers was gunned down in her car on August 14 in Taxila, in Pakistan. in an attack that has intensified concern over a string of killings targeting Pakistani women with large social media followings.
The victim, Shamso Bibi, known online as Ayesha Gilamana, was shot in the neck and died at the scene after two men on a motorcycle opened fire on her vehicle.The attack, which took place in the early evening, also sent the car crashing into a dumper truck, seriously injuring her 15-year-old sister, Aseema, who was hospitalized.
According to the complaint file by her father, Bibi received a call shortly before the shooting from a man identified as Kashif, alias "Kashi," who asked her to come outside the family home. She left with Aseema and her brother in their car. CCTV footage circulating afterward reportedly shows the attackers firing at close range as the car passed.
The family has alleged the killing stemmed from a financial dispute.
Police in Rawalpindi have registered a case and initiated a probe.
As of August 18, a special police team had detained four people in operations across Taxila, Attock and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — reportedly relatives and associates of the named suspects — for questioning, though no formal arrests of the named suspects themselves had been announced.
Bibi had been posting on TikTok for roughly three to four years and had built an audience of about 1.3 million followers, along with some 176,000 subscribers on YouTube; her brother said her TikTok account had drawn more than 30 million likes. Following her death, the family deactivated her TikTok account.
Bibi's killing is the latest in a series of violent deaths involving Pakistani women who built large social media followings, a trend that has drawn growing national attention.