Lahore farm worker killed by big cat during TikTok video shoot

Lahore police have arrested a private breeding farmhouse's owner and a TikToker who came there to shoot a video, and sealed the property, after a 19-year-old employee was killed by a big cat in the Kahna area.

The FIR, registered at Kahna police station on 12 November on the complaint of the dead man's father, Munir Ahmed, says the attack happened at about 5pm on 11 November.

According to the complaint, Noman Hassan arrived at the farmhouse and called Talha, who worked there, to make a TikTok video with the animal. The FIR says Noman took it out of its cage and began filming, and that it turned on the young man. Munir Ahmed says he, his son Hashim and his brother Abdul Qayyum watched it happen.

Talha was driven to Central Park Hospital, where he died of his wounds, the FIR says. The complaint accuses farmhouse owner Fayyaz, known as Faizi, of failing to put proper safety arrangements in place.

Police registered the case under sections 289 and 322 of the Pakistan Penal Code and sections 10-A and 12 of the Punjab Wildlife (Protection, Preservation, Conservation and Management) Act 1974. Section 289 covers negligence in handling an animal and carries up to six months in jail, a fine of up to Rs3,000, or both. Section 322 applies to causing death by an act, and an offender is liable to pay diyat.

DIG Operations Faisal Kamran told BBC Urdu that three people had been arrested: the farm owner, the TikToker and an employee. He said the farm had been sealed and the animal handed to the wildlife department.

A police spokesman said an attempt was made to hide what happened by presenting the attack as a dog bite, and that the investigation established it was a big cat. Kamran said officers were checking whether the farm held the permits needed to keep the animal and what safety measures were in place. "The taste for TikTok cannot be bigger than a human life," he said. "No one will be allowed to put human life at risk in the name of a hobby or entertainment."

Noman Hassan's TikTok account has more than 928,000 followers and carries numerous videos made with lions.

Pet big cats have attacked people in Lahore before. In January two children were injured in separate incidents, and one boy's arm was mauled and had to be amputated. The Punjab government said it would cancel licences to breed lions. Uzma Khan, director of biodiversity at WWF Pakistan, told BBC Urdu then that about 584 big cats were kept as pets across Punjab, among them 358 lions, 194 leopards and 10 jaguars, at roughly 179 breeding farms in 18 districts.

Aaj News reported that the body was moved to a morgue for a post-mortem.