The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday dismissed a review petition filed by Zahir Jaffer and maintained its earlier verdict upholding his death sentence in the Noor Mukadam murder case.

Noor, aged 27, was found murdered at Zahir’s Islamabad residence in July 2021, with the probe revealing she was tortured by him before being beheaded. Zahir was sentenced to death by a trial in February 2022 and his sentence has already been upheld by the SC once. Prior to that, the Islamabad High Court had also dismissed his plea challenging the trial court’s verdict.

A three-member bench comprising Justices Muhammad Hashim Khan Kakar, Salahuddin Panhwar and Ishtiaq Ibrahim heard Zahir’s review plea on Thursday.

Advocate Khawaja Haris appeared as Zahir’s counsel, while Shah Khawar was present from the respondents’ side. Both presented their arguments during today’s hearing, following which the bench announced its verdict.

After today’s ruling by the SC, a presidential pardon under Article 45 of the Constitution could possibly provide Zahir pardon, or reprieve, or remit, suspend or commute his sentence.

Zahir was last year contemplating filing a mercy petition before President Asif Ali Zardari, with a letter by jail authorities seeking the formation of a medical board so its opinion could be included in the plea.

The SC’s May 2025 ruling, which upheld Zahir’s death sentence, was issued by a three-member bench led by Justice Kakar and including Justices Ibrahim and Ali Baqar Najafi.

The verdict had commuted Zahir’s death sentence on the rape charge to life imprisonment, as decided by the trial court, but did not acquit him of it.

While he was acquitted of the 10-year sentence for kidnapping, a one-year term was handed down for wrongful confinement under Section 342 of the Pakistan Penal Code, according to the SC verdict.

Subsequently, in July 2025, Zahir had sought a review of that SC ruling.

The 47-page review petition was filed by Advocate Khawaja Haris on behalf of Zahir under Article 188 of the Constitution (review of judgments or orders by SC). The state and Noor’s father, Shaukat Ali Mukadam, were made the respondents.

The petition contended that the issue of Zahir’s alleged “unsoundness of mind or mental capacity” that was raised before the SC in an application had not been addressed and was “given short shrift”.

On the rape charges, the review plea argued that it was “apparent from the record that there is no evidence on the record in proof of this allegation”.

The plea argued that the video recordings, based on which the SC upheld the death sentence, had not been proved during the trial and were not provided to any of the accused.

However, in its detailed verdict, the SC had stressed the significance of digital evidence by declaring that footage can be admissible as primary evidence under the “silent witness theory” — a rule of evidence that allows for photog­r­a­­phic video or other recorded evidence to be admitted as substantive proof of what it depicts, without the need for an eyewitness’s testimony.

Justice Kakar had observed that the silent witness theory of authentication had developed in almost all jurisdictions over the last 25 years to allow photos to substantively “speak for themselves”.

The SC had also noted that Zahir neglected to provide any explanation for the victim’s presence at his residence and the ensuing recovery of her body from the premises.

Case history

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

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.

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

Zahir’s 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”.

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.

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.

Six officials of Therapy Works, whose employees had visited the site of the murder before the police, were also among those indicted by the lower court but were later freed of the charges along with the parents.

In March 2023, the IHC, dismissing 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 that the high court and trial court could not identify the “fundamental flaws” in the FIR.

In a ruling that was widely seen as justice being served, the SC in May 2025 upheld the convict’s death sentence by rejecting his appeal against the IHC verdict.

Two months later, while also preparing to file a mercy petition, Zahir approached the SC seeking review of its verdict, which was dismissed today.