Photographer documented her divorce on TikTok. Then she was killed in murder-suicide

A photographer who documented her journey of healing from her divorce on TikTok was killed by her ex-husband in a murder-suicide, according to local reports.

Sania Khan, 29, was found dead at her home in Chicago on July 18, Fox 5 reported. Her ex-husband, 36-year-old Raheel Ahmad, traveled to Chicago from his home in Georgia to “salvage the marriage,” the outlet reported.

There, he killed Khan and then turned the gun on himself, Chicago police said, according to Fox 5.

Khan was pronounced dead at the scene, and Ahmad was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, the Chicago Police Department told McClatchy News.

Khan’s death was ruled a homicide by coroners, and Ahmad’s death was ruled a suicide, NBC News reported.

Police were asked to check in on Ahmad in Chicago after his family members reported him missing in Atlanta. Police in Georgia told Chicago police that the couple was “going through a divorce” at the time of Ahmad’s disappearance, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

In her TikTok videos, Khan discussed the immense pressure she felt as a South Asian woman going through a divorce. She urged her followers to stand up for themselves and to pay attention to “red flags.” She talked about her journey to feel empowered after her divorce, even though other people in the South Asian community did not support her decision, according to several of her videos.

“To my South Asian queens, a reminder that you don’t have to settle in marriage or love,” Khan said in one of her videos under the username @geminigirl_099. “The person you marry is the person you sleep next to every single night. Please don’t take that lightly. Sleeping next to you is a honor. Is that man truly deserving of you or does he just look good on paper?”

In another video, Khan said that going through a divorce as a South Asian woman “feels like you failed at life sometimes.”

‘Not everything is roses and rainbows’

Khan and her ex-husband, both of Pakistani descent, met online and had been together for about five years before marriage, Khan’s friend Mehru Sheikh told the Chicago Tribune.

Sheikh, who was Khan’s maid of honor, said Khan was initially wary of posting about her divorce on social media because she knew she would receive backlash. However, she later changed her mind.

“We as a society are willing to sacrifice women time and time again just to uphold some culture norms, and she was not about it,” Sheikh told the Tribune. “After careful consideration going back and forth, she finally decided that she owed it to herself and other women of color to speak out because she felt like it was a personal responsibility for her to speak out and let other women who are in the same situation know that this is something that happens. Not everything is roses and rainbows.”

Her posts often reflected her high hopes for life after her divorce. She was planning to move back to her hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee,, the Sun-Times reported.

Khan’s friend Gabriella Bordó, who traveled to Chicago on the day of Khan’s murder to help her pack up her things, told the Chattanooga Free Press.

Bordó also told Time that she frequently discussed the issues in Khan’s marriage with her.

“[Khan] was encouraged to stay, pleaded with to stay, by her family and ex-husband’s family,” Bordó told Time. “I didn’t see someone as spirited as her being so manipulated or controlled by someone, but she was.”

‘A community wide issue’

The news of Khan’s death sparked conversations among South Asians in America about misogyny and the pressureSouth Asian women face to preserve a marriage at all costs, according to Time and NBC News.

“In South Asian communities, there’s this concept of saving face and preserving family honor — not bringing shame to the family. Those things are prioritized over an individual’s safety,” Neha Gill, executive director of Apna Ghar, a Chicago-based human rights organization that focuses on gender-based violence, told the outlet.

“This is a community wide issue and the community definitely needs to be reflecting and looking at it in that way and not just saying: ‘Oh, that poor girl, or her family didn’t do this,’” Gill said.

After her death, friends of Khan’s started a scholarship in her honor, Insider reported. The money will be awarded to female students of Khan’s high school who plan to pursue a fine arts degree from a Tennessee university.

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