Justice Hashim Kakar observed on Monday that Noor Mukadam was \u201cmercilessly murdered\u201d as the Supreme Court took up accused Zahir Jaffer\u2019s appeal against his death sentence.<\/p>\n
Noor, aged 27 years, was found murdered at Zahir\u2019s Islamabad residence in July 2021, with the probe revealing she was tortured before being beheaded. Zahir\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Justice Kakar was leading a three-member bench, which included Justices Ishtiaq Ibrahim and Ali Baqar Najafi.<\/p>\n
Barrister Salman Safdar appeared as Zahir\u2019s counsel while Advocate Shah Khawar was present on behalf of Noor\u2019s father, retired diplomat Shaukat Mukadam.<\/p>\n
The accused\u2019s lawyer contended that no medical board was formed to assess his client\u2019s mental state. The hearing was adjourned till tomorrow, with both sides\u2019 counsels expected to present their arguments.<\/p>\n
During the previous hearing, Safdar had sought more time from the court to submit Zahir\u2019s medical reports, claiming he was \u201cmentally ill\u201d and the lower courts that sentenced his client had \u201cignored\u201d this aspect.<\/p>\n
Justice Kakar had observed that a hearing was adjourned \u201conly on the death of a lawyer or a judge\u201d and regretted \u201cunnecessary delays\u201d in court cases. Safdar\u2019s request for more time was then approved with the consensus of both sides.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s father, Zakir Jaffer, is also among the pleas to be heard.<\/p>\n
In October last year, Noor\u2019s father had urged the SC to take up the murder case pending for more than one and a half years in the top court.<\/p>\n
The hearing
\nAt the outset of his arguments, Safdar informed the bench that he has submitted Zahir\u2019s medical history from 2013 until now to the court.<\/p>\n
This photo combo shows (L to R) Justices Ishtiaq Ibrahim, Hashim Kakar and Ali Baqar Najafi. \u2014 SC website
\nHe detailed the punishments handed over to his client \u2014 death sentence on murder, jail term turned into death penalty on rape and concurrent 10 years in prison for kidnapping.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
He claimed there was \u201cno evidence\u201d provided that the site of the crime was the suspect\u2019s residence. Police had previously said that samples collected from a knife, used as a murder weapon, and blood stains matched with the victim.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s post-mortem report conducted the next morning.<\/p>\n
Safdar further said that Amjad, a Therapy Works employee injured during the incident, was \u201cmade a suspect instead of a witness\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Justice Hashim Kakar observed on Monday that Noor Mukadam was \u201cmercilessly murdered\u201d as the Supreme Court took up accused Zahir Jaffer\u2019s appeal against his death sentence. Noor, aged 27 years, was found murdered at Zahir\u2019s Islamabad residence in July 2021, with the probe revealing she was tortured before being beheaded. Zahir\u2019s death sentence by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9289,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-court-and-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9290,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9288\/revisions\/9290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}