LAHORE (The Thursday Times) — The family of Talha, the 19-year-old farm worker killed by a pet lioness at a farmhouse outside Lahore this week, has forgiven the two men arrested over his death, and a court has granted both of them bail.
The suspects, farmhouse owner Fayyaz Ahmed and TikToker Nauman Hassan, were produced on Saturday before Judicial Magistrate Qaiser Riaz at the Model Town courts in Lahore, where police asked for seven days of physical remand to continue their investigation.
Talha’s legal heirs appeared in court and recorded statements saying they had forgiven both men for the sake of Allah. They also submitted affidavits confirming their decision.
The state prosecutor opposed their release, arguing that the men were accused of a serious offence and should be handed to the police for further questioning. The magistrate turned down the remand request and sent both men to judicial custody, then approved their bail against surety bonds of Rs50,000 each.
Talha was attacked on Wednesday at a farmhouse in the Kahna area, where the TikToker had come to film a video. He died in hospital. Police said there had been an attempt to pass his injuries off as a dog bite before the lioness attack came to light, and the animal was handed over to the Punjab Wildlife Department, which began its own legal proceedings. The Thursday Times reported the attack and the arrests on Thursday.
“A passion for TikTok cannot be worth more than a human life,” Faisal Kamran, Lahore’s Deputy Inspector General of Operations, said after the arrests.
Keeping lions and other big cats has become a status symbol for some wealthy Pakistanis and social media influencers. In July 2025, a pet lion escaped and attacked a woman and two children in a Lahore street, and the authorities confiscated 18 lions kept as pets in the crackdown that followed. In an editorial on Friday, The Thursday Times argued that Punjab must enforce its own big-cat law.
