Justice Hashim Kakar observed on Monday that Noor Mukadam was “mercilessly murdered” as the Supreme Court took up accused Zahir Jaffer’s appeal against his death sentence.

Noor, aged 27 years, was found murdered at Zahir’s Islamabad residence in July 2021, with the probe revealing she was tortured before being beheaded. Zahir’s death sentence by the trial court was upheld by the Islamabad High Court (IHC), which had also turned his jail term over rape charges into a second death penalty.

Justice Kakar was leading a three-member bench, which included Justices Ishtiaq Ibrahim and Ali Baqar Najafi.

Barrister Salman Safdar appeared as Zahir’s counsel while Advocate Shah Khawar was present on behalf of Noor’s father, retired diplomat Shaukat Mukadam.

The accused’s lawyer contended that no medical board was formed to assess his client’s mental state. The hearing was adjourned till tomorrow, with both sides’ counsels expected to present their arguments.

During the previous hearing, Safdar had sought more time from the court to submit Zahir’s medical reports, claiming he was “mentally ill” and the lower courts that sentenced his client had “ignored” this aspect.

Justice Kakar had observed that a hearing was adjourned “only on the death of a lawyer or a judge” and regretted “unnecessary delays” in court cases. Safdar’s request for more time was then approved with the consensus of both sides.

The appeals of the convicted co-accused in the case were to be taken up as well. An appeal by Shaukat against the acquittal of Zahir’s father, Zakir Jaffer, is also among the pleas to be heard.

In October last year, Noor’s father had urged the SC to take up the murder case pending for more than one and a half years in the top court.

The hearing

At the outset of his arguments, Safdar informed the bench that he has submitted Zahir’s medical history from 2013 until now to the court.

He detailed the punishments handed over to his client — death sentence on murder, jail term turned into death penalty on rape and concurrent 10 years in prison for kidnapping.

Safdar contended that only the charge of murder was mentioned in the first information report (FIR) initially, while other offences were included 22 days later.

He claimed there was “no evidence” provided that the site of the crime was the suspect’s residence. Police had previously said that samples collected from a knife, used as a murder weapon, and blood stains matched with the victim.

The lawyer detailed that the incident took place at 10pm and the case was registered at 11:30pm that night, before 12:10am, which he said was the stated time of death in Noor’s post-mortem report conducted the next morning.

Safdar further said that Amjad, a Therapy Works employee injured during the incident, was “made a suspect instead of a witness”.

He added that the police were “depending” on Zahir’s photogrammetry tests and CCTV footage, referring to a video that revealed that Noor had jumped from the first floor of the house and ran towards the main gate to save her life, but found it locked.

At one point, Safdar mentioned a video leak controversy involving former accountability court judge Mohammad Arshad Malik, to which Justice Kakar replied that the lawyer was depending on a verdict by then-chief justice Asif Saeed Khosa.

The judge remarked that it would be “very difficult to prove literally anything” if one went strictly by parameters.

Barrister Safdar argued that the murder weapon was a “small knife on which the fingerprints of the accused were not even present”. He added that all witnesses, besides Noor’s father, were officials.

Here, Justice Kakar observed, “There were no eyewitnesses in the case. All evidence is circumstantial.”

Justice Kakar then indicated that the appeal would be decided soon, remarking that a “relief would be given if due”. He remarked, “Judges should bear some pain. It should not be the case that an appeal is taken up for hearing and then the case is not heard again.

“Individuals remain locked up in a death cell for as many as 10 years. This will not happen now.”

The court then gave a break in the proceedings, saying they will resume later in the afternoon after a hearing of the reserved seats case.

When the hearing resumed at around 1:30pm, Safdar contended, “My client’s mental state was not okay when the incident happened. The trial court did not have his mental state properly examined.”

Justice Kakar responded, “You should have filed an application at that time about whatever objections you had.”

Upon Safdar claiming that Zahir was not “medically fit at any stage of his trial”, the bench asked him whether any medical board had been formed to assess the suspect’s mental state.

To this, the lawyer replied, “This is the concern. No medical board was formed at any stage.”

The sessions court had dismissed the application to form a medical board in January 2022, noting that the concern was not raised in earlier hearings but only when the trial was “going to end very soon”. It had pointed out that the plea was moved without providing Zahir’s medical history and “just to get rid of criminal liability”.

During the hearing, Safdar noted that the evidence referred to the CCTV footage and a digital video recorder, and recalled that Zahir had pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.

Safdar reiterated that the prosecution’s “entire case was based on CCTV footage and DVR”, adding that the post-mortem report made “no mention of the injuries’ sizes”.

At this point, Justice Kakar asked the lawyer, “Are you making an unnatural death controversial?

“A daughter was mercilessly murdered,” the judge observed.

Justice Najafi remarked, “Our system is like this. The parties know everything,” while Justice Ibrahim quipped: “The parties know all facts. The trial is of the judges.”

Justice Kakar noted that Noor’s murder took place “in the presence of six to seven people”. Adding to that, Shaukat’s lawyer Khawar said that the “owner and employees of Therapy Works were made suspects for concealing facts”.

Justice Ibrahim wondered why “three post-mortems were conducted”, at which Safdar said Khawar could answer that.

Khawar said he would need one to one-and-a-half hours to present his arguments, at which Justice Kakar said the bench would only be available for the same duration tomorrow.

The judge suggested alloting 30 minutes to Safdar tomorrow after which Khawar could be heard. Khawar replied, “As you may deem better.”

Subsequently, the hearing was adjourned till tomorrow (Tuesday), with Safdar expected to conclude his arguments and Khawar to present his.

Case history

Noor, 27, was found murdered at a residence in Islamabad’s upscale Sector F-7/4 on July 20, 2021. An FIR was registered later the same day against Zahir Jaffer, who was arrested at the site of the murder.

In February 2022, a district and sessions judge sentenced Jaffer to death for the murder and handed him 25 years of rigorous imprisonment, finding him guilty of rape. His household staff, Mohammad Iftikhar and Jan Mohammad — co-accused in the case — were each sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Zahir’s parents, leading businessman Zakir Jaffer and Asmat Adamji, had been indicted by an Islamabad district and sessions court in October 2021 but were later acquitted by the court.

Six officials of Therapy Works, whose employees had visited the site of the murder before police, were also among those indicted by the lower court but were later freed of the charges along with the parents. According to the challan, the parents and the therapy workers tried to conceal the crime and attempted to destroy the evidence.

In March 2023, the IHC, dismissing the Zahir’s appeal, not only upheld the death sentence but also converted his 25-year jail term into another death penalty. The IHC had also rejected the pleas of the main suspect’s staff challenging their conviction.

The next month, Zahir approached the SC against the IHC verdict, insisting that his conviction resulted from “erroneous appreciation” of the case evidence and the high court and trial court could not identify the “fundamental flaws” in the FIR.

Brutal murder

After an FIR was registered in the case and Zahir was arrested, his parents and household staff were also taken into custody by police on July 24, 2021 over allegations of “hiding evidence and being complicit in the crime”. They were made a part of the investigation based on the statement of Noor’s father but were later acquitted.

In his complaint, Shaukat had stated that he had gone to Rawalpindi on July 19 to buy a goat for Eidul Azha, while his wife had gone out to pick up clothes from her tailor. When he had returned home in the evening, the couple found their daughter Noor absent from their house in Islamabad.

They had found her cellphone number switched off and started a search for her. Sometime later, Noor had called her parents to inform them that she was travelling to Lahore with some friends and would return in a day or two, according to the FIR.

The complainant said he had later received a call from Zahir, whose family were their acquaintances. Zahir had informed Shaukat that Noor was not with him, the FIR said.

At around 10pm on July 20, the victim’s father had received a call from Kohsar police station, informing him that Noor had been murdered.

Police had subsequently taken the complainant to Zahir’s house in Sector F-7/4 where he discovered that his “daughter has been brutally murdered with a sharp-edged weapon and beheaded”, according to the FIR.

Shaukat, who identified his daughter’s body, had sought the maximum punishment under the law against Zahir for allegedly murdering his daughter.

Police later said that Zahir had confessed to killing Noor, while his DNA test and fingerprints also showed his involvement in the murder.