The Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday rejected the appeal filed by Zahir Jaffer against the death penalty awarded to him in the 2021 murder case of Noor Mukadam, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.
A three-member bench of the apex court, headed by Justice Hashim Kakar, read out the brief verdict and thus upheld the capital punishment awarded to Zahir, dismissing his appeal.
The court, however, gave some relief to the convict.
It replaced the death penalty awarded to Zahir for rape with life imprisonment.
The court cut short the sentence awarded to him for kidnapping Noor by 10 years.
The bench also upheld the court order to the convict to pay compensation to the victim’s family.
The court also granted relief to the night watchman and the gardener, co-accused in the case, and said they had already completed their prison term.
Earlier during the hearing, Salman Safdar, counsel for Zahir, said that the entire case of the prosecution relied on CCTV camera footage and DVR. “The court cannot look for other footage except that presented before it,” he argued.
Justice Kakar said, “You have already admitted that the footage is real. And now you are objecting to one of these footage. Even the Punjab’s Forensic Science Laboratory confirmed that the video had not been tampered with.”
The judge went on to say that had any human being made the video, then an objection could have been raised that a particular scene of the video was deliberately highlighted.
Noor Mukadam, 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 Zahir 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 employees of the 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 apex court 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.
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.
Reporter: Amanat Gishkori