Contrary to earlier reports that she was strangled, Nabila Ghazzanfar, a Punjab Police spokeswoman, told Al Jazeera the initial post-mortem showed Baloch’s nose and mouth had been pinned shut, blocking off her airways.
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Qandeel Baloch, often referred to as the Pakistani equivalent of Rakhi Sawant when she was alive, suffered a death most brutal on Saturday morning when she was killed by her brother.
The 25-year-old rose to fame with the sassy, and increasingly political, videos that she had started posting on Facebook.
“Qandeel says she now faces death threats, and has asked the Ministry of Interior for armed security”, as the BBC reported.
“Apparently the lady died of suffocation, but final opinion on her death would be possible only after report of chemical examination comes”, said. It is not clear whether she was administered any poisonous substance before the actual killing, but the police is investigating that angle too.
Despite that, she continued to be outspoken in her beliefs, saying in one recent Facebook post that “At least global media can see what i am up to”.
“Qandeel Baloch was 26”.
She had expressed her desire many times to marry ex-cricketer and opposition politician Imran Khan. But in a country where women have fought for rights for decades, and acid attacks and honour, killings remain commonplace.
In her last interview with Pakistan’s biggest English-language newspaper Dawn she spoke of being married against her will at age 17 to “an uneducated man” with whom she had a child, adding that they later divorced.
Pakistani volunteers move the body of social media celebrity, Qandeel Baloch from her residence in Lahore on July 16, 2016. Due to this scandal, Mufti Abdul Qavi has also been nominated in the FIR of her murder. In the conservative Islamic Republic of Pakistan, this was considered a taboo subject that brought shame upon her and her family. “She was a working class woman who dared to be exactly herself”. Madiha Tahir, co-founder of the feminist magazine Tanqeed, called her a “gutsy feminist provocateur” who had exposed “the hypocrisy of the male-dominated establishment, especially the clergy, through her social media videos”.
The social-media sensation had planned to move out of Pakistan.
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“She was killed because she said and did things that made people feel uncomfortable and angry”, said Erum Haider, a Karachi native and PhD student at Georgetown University. “I fail to understand why humans have taken up the responsibility to play God”, said Rehana, who had come to the park with her family.
