[1] Azeem rose to prominence due to her videos on social networks discussing her daily routine, her rights as a Pakistani woman, and various controversial issues.
[6] Qandeel was born on 1 March, 1990 in Shah Sadar Din, a town in the Dera Ghazi Khan District,[7] of the southern part of the Punjab province of Pakistan, into a Saraiki-speaking, ethnic Baloch family.
[11] She started to appear on Pakistani talk shows regularly by 2014, either to perform songs or to discuss her rising social media popularity.
[12] In June 2016, Baloch met senior cleric Mufti Abdul Qawi at a hotel to learn more about her faith; the interaction between them brought about mayhem on social media platforms, as their photos became popular online.
[16] The meeting led to the Mufti being suspended from his position from one of Pakistan's religious committees, and to Baloch being a regular on popular Pakistani current affairs and news programmes.
[17] In an interview with controversial anchor Mubashir Luqman, Baloch named Sunny Leone, Rakhi Sawant and Poonam Pandey as her inspirations.
Following the June 2016 meeting with Qawi, Qandeel held a press conference and reported that she received death threats both from him and from others, and demanded police protection from the state.
[17][22] At the end of June, images of Baloch's passport and national identity card were broadcast on the news, showing her hometown and father's name.
[17] She told the reporter that she had sought protection from the police but on receiving no response, had decided to move abroad with her parents after the Eid al-Fitr holidays as she felt unsafe in Pakistan.
[36][37] Baloch's father Azeem stated in the FIR that his sons Aslam Shaheen and Waseem were responsible for their sister's death and had killed her for her money.
"[39] The state was named as complainant in her murder case, making it impossible for the victim's family to pardon the perpetrator [40][41][42] (see the Pakistani diyaa law).
[50] Several personalities, including Madonna, Khloé Kardashian, Miley Cyrus, Jamie Lee Curtis, Rakhi Sawant, Imran Khan, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Sharmila Farooqi, Reham Khan, Sanam Baloch, Osman Khalid Butt, Meesha Shafi, Nadia Hussain, Ali Zafar,[51] along with many others condemned the incident,[52][53] including filmmaker and activist Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy who said, "I really feel that no woman is safe in this country, until we start making examples of people, until we start sending men who kill women to jail, unless we literally say there will be no more killing and those who dare will spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
[60] On 2 November 2017, the of Baloch's father submitted an application to police alleging that his life was in danger from those who planned his daughter's murder.
On 27 July 2017, Urdu1 started to air a 28-episode biopic television drama titled Baaghi (meaning Rebel in Urdu) based on Qandeel's life, where Saba Qamar plays her character.
[63] In March 2017, the British-Pakistani-Indian-American hip hop group Swet Shop Boys dedicated the track Aaja from their latest album to the memory of Qandeel Baloch.
Produced by Make Productions, it tells how Baloch's bold and sexual videos challenged convention and shocked a nation which later led to fatal consequences.