A district and sessions court in Islamabad on Saturday extended the physical remand of Zahir Zakir Jaffer — the primary suspect in Noor Mukadam's brutal murder case — by two more days after the prosecution asked for more time to investigate "new details and characters" found in CCTV footage.

The suspect was produced in the court of Judicial Magistrate Shoaib Akhtar today under tight security following the completion of his three-day remand granted earlier in the week.

Once the court proceedings began, the state prosecutor asked the court for a three-day extension in Jaffer's physical remand — a request also backed by the plaintiff's attorney.

The complainant's counsel argued that "new details and characters" were found from the analysis of 40 hours of CCTV footage, which require more investigation and thus the extension was sought.

The court was informed that the details and individuals will be made a part of the investigation.

Jaffer's counsel, however, opposed the extension request and questioned the need for further physical remand when a polygraph test (lie detector test) was already conducted.

The court accepted the extension request and remanded Jaffer for two more days to police custody for further investigation. The police was ordered to produce the suspect before the court on August 2 (Monday).

The case

Noor, 27, daughter of former Pakistani diplomat Shaukat Mukadam, was found murdered at a residence in Islamabad's upscale Sector F-7/4 on July 20.

A first information report (FIR) was registered later the same day against Jaffer, who was arrested from the site of the murder, under Section 302 (premeditated murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code on the complaint of the victim's father.

In his complaint, Shaukat Mukadam 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 to be 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, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com.

The complainant said he had later received a call from the suspect, son of Zakir Jaffer, whose family were the ex-diplomat's acquaintances. The suspect 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.

Mukadam, who identified his daughter's body, has sought the maximum punishment under the law against Zahir for allegedly murdering his daughter.