Naira Salah’s Death Sparks Outcry for Justice on Social Media

After blackmail and extortion, on 29 February, the 19-year-old university student, Naira Salah, lost her life.

Following a dispute between Salah and Shorouk, her university colleague, the latter took compromising pictures of Salah in the dormitory bathroom and threatened to circulate the photos on the internet.

She then sent the pictures to a male colleague, Taha Al-Tamili, to blackmail Salah, and they planned to threaten and publicly shame her at the university unless she apologized to them.

Using the university group chat on WhatsApp, they sent a poll, asking people to vote on when to publish the photos taken of Salah, demanding that Salah apologize in the group chat. Salah conformed and apologized on the group chat, making members of the group think that the argument was over.

Nonetheless, Salah was soon pronounced dead, catching people by surprise.

Salah was a college girl studying veterinary medicine at Al-Arish University. She was loved by her family and friends, and known for having a strong religious faith. Her mother is a nurse, and her father is a lawyer’s assistant.

On the day of her demise, Salah called her mother telling her that she was vomiting excessively. According to an official at the university, Salah was transferred an hour later to the hospital and went into a coma. Her parents traveled from Al Dakhalia to Al-Arish in a hurry, and as soon as they stepped foot into the hospital, they received the news of their daughter’s death.

Devastated, heartbroken, and unaware of the reason for her death, they hurriedly took her to Mit Tarif village for burial.

The news of her death sparked a major uproar on social media platforms in Egypt, and a social media hashtag of “Justice for Al-Arish student” broke out.

There are photos of Salah’s personal chats with her friend circulating on the internet, where she tells her friend about Sherouk’s threats to ruin her reputation and make her ‘hate her life.’

Social media users are calling out Shorouk and Taha, posting pictures of them online and calling them ‘murderers.’ While others are trying to contain the situation, asking them to stop calling them out because it might ruin their lives as well.