THE death penalty awarded to Zahir Jaffar for the brutal killing of Noor Mukadam in 2021 has been upheld by the Supreme Court. The court has reiterated that the murderer must pay for the crime with his life. It is, no doubt, a dire sentence — this paper, in principle, opposes capital punishment.

The judges, it must be noted, did commute the death sentence on the rape charge to life imprisonment, and the kidnapping sentence from 10 years to one. However, when it came to the murder charge, it appears they felt it necessary to match the severity of the crime with the severity of the punishment. Many well-wishers hope that the verdict will bring the Mukadam family some closure after their long ordeal to secure justice for their murdered daughter.

Noor’s brutal killing had shaken the Pakistani public out of its reverie to take note of the misogyny and domestic violence prevalent in society. The case had been closely followed. The evidence, eyewitness accounts, and sequence of events stitched together by the media from police reports had painted a deeply unsettling picture of Jaffar and the tragic circumstances surrounding Noor’s demise.

It was evident that her death was the result of not just one person’s malevolence, but a preventable tragedy caused by several individuals failing to do the right thing at the right time. These individuals seem to have been quite aware that a woman was being held against her will and likely being subjected to violence, but ignored her plight. It is unfortunate that their role in the murder never faced enough scrutiny; it would have helped establish that violence against women may be perpetrated by individuals, but it is enabled by society.

On a related note, it is also disappointing that the superior judiciary took so much time giving finality to the verdict. It ought to have taken the matter up with the urgency it demanded.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2025