Enraged by his ex-wife’s TikTok videos, a Pakistani man drove all the way from Georgia to Chicago, covering over 1,400 kilometres (875 miles), and killed her. He committed suicide after murdering her.
Prior to the murder-suicide, the woman, Sania Khan—a Pakistani American photographer—had been posting videos on TikTok about escaping a toxic marriage and moving on with her life. In her videos, she was documenting her journey of healing from the painful divorce.
As per reports, Raheel Ahmad, 39, was angered with Khan for making videos about her relationship and the South Asian community’s response to it and drove for 14 hours to reach her home.
According to a police report obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, Sania Khan, 29, was allegedly shot and killed by her ex-husband, Ahmed. Khan had recently moved to Chicago.
Local media reports stated that the incident took place last week. Ahmed’s family had called the Alpharetta police after he was found missing from his home. They asked for a welfare check at Khan’s apartment, where they thought he might be.
The police then arrived at 200 block of E. Ohio street, where thery found a woman and a man with gunshot wounds to their heads inside a residence, Chicago police told ABC News in a statement
Khan was pronounced dead on the spot, whereas Ahmed was taken to Northwestern Hospital where he was declared dead as well. Police said they have recovered a weapon from the scene.
The killing of the Pakistani woman has sent shock waves across the diaspora, where the other South Asian women have found resonance with the killing. They say that they have faced the same stigmas and isolation when trying to leave abusive partners.
“I could see myself in her,” a Marathi woman who lives in the US told NBC News. “For her to have not only left him, but being able to survive and be happy and do well, that was not something he could not live with.”
Khan, who is a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, talked about her marital struggles on TikTok. She would urge women to “stop ignoring those red flags” and shared her struggles with her own family and some in the South Asian community, who did not support her decision to leave her husband, according to ABC News.
“Going through a divorce as a South Asian Woman feels like you failed at life sometimes,” she wrote in a TikTok video.
“The way the community labels you, the lack of emotional support you receive, and the pressure to stay with someone because ‘what will people say’ is isolating. It makes it harder for women to leave marriages that they shouldn’t have been in to begin with.”
(With inputs from agencies)
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