Justice Ali Baqar Najafi, who is now part of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), has observed that the Noor Mukadam case is the direct result of a “vice” spreading in society known as “living relationship”, it emerged on Wednesday.

It appeared the judge was referring to a live-in relationship, where two unmarried individuals in a romantic relationship cohabitate.

Noor, aged 27 years, was found murdered at the Islamabad residence of Zahir Zakir Jaffer in July 2021. In May, a three-judge Supreme Court bench, led by Justice Hashim Kakar and including Justices Ishtiaq Ibrahim and Najafi, had upheld the death sentence awarded to Zahir, who was convicted by an Islamabad trial court in 2022.

Last month, the apex court had taken up Zakir’s review petition challenging the capital punishment awarded to him. During the hearing, Justice Najafi told senior counsel Khawaja Haris Ahmed, representing the convict, that it would be more appropriate for him to start arguments after going through the additional note he had not yet issued at the time.

Later, Justice Najafi was sworn in as a judge of the FCC, established earlier this month after the 27th Constitutional Amendment.

In an additional note on the Noor murder case, which was uploaded on the SC website today, Justice Najafi upheld the sentence handed to Zahir and observed that “the present case is a direct result of a vice spreading in the upper society which we know as ‘living relationship’ [sic]”.

He stressed that such relationships ignored “societal compulsions” and “defy not only the law of the land but also the personal law” under Sharia.

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Justice Najafi went on to say that engaging in a relationship like that was a “direct revolt against Almighty Allah”, calling on the younger generation to note its “horrible consequences, such as in the present case, which is also a topic for the social reformist to discuss in their circles”.

Justice Najafi further said that in his view, “no mitigating circumstances” existed in the present case.

He noted that the “minor discrepancies in the time of occurrence, the delay in postmortem, absence of the finger prints on the knife but matched with the DNA of the petitioner, minor delay in lodging the first information would not affect the credibility of the prosecution evidence, which had circumstantial evidence”.

“In this case of circumstantial evidence, one end of the rope is found tied with the dead body of Noor Mukadam, and the other end tied with the neck of the petitioner,” he said.

Mentioning the filing of the first information report (FIR) at 11:30pm of the incident that occurred at 9:30pm, Justice Najafi observed that the statement of Noor’s father, retired diplomat Shaukat Mukadam, of “receiving the information […] about the murder of his daughter is well corroborated”.

The judge wrote: “It is natural that after reaching the place of occurrence, the complainant being the real father of the victim required some time and extraordinary nerves to absorb the extreme shock of his life and then draft the complaint for registration of FIR.”

Noting that the postmortem report suggested a gap of eight to nine hours between Noor’s death and her body’s autopsy, Justice Najafi said, “This delay of conducting postmortem of about 12 hours is not fatal.”

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The judge also mentioned the CCTV footage obtained during the trial, showing Noor jumped from the window and “came limping towards main gate to escape”, but watchman Mohammad Iftikhar locked the door.

He further said that Zahir “snatched the mobile phone of [the] deceased, locked her in the outer cabin”, then opened it and physically assaulted her, while gardener Muhammad Jan “did not make any effort to stop” Zahir.

“It was not mere seeing the petitioner (Zahir) with the deceased (Noor) before the unnatural death caused in most brutal manner, but there are circumstantial evidence which connect the petitioner with crime,” Justice Najafi remarked.

Touching upon Zahir’s stance, Justice Najafi said his version, which alleged Noor had consumed drugs in excess, was “found incorrect” as no intoxicant was identified in either the convict’s or the victim’s medical evidence, and no “guest of drug party” was seen in the CCTV footage.

On Zahir’s plea of insanity, the judge observed that there was “no evidence on record that the petitioner used to consult any psychiatrist, therapy workers or consume any drug in the absence of which, or due to which, he became infurious and went out of mind”.

The case

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

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.

Zahir’s parents, leading businessman Zakir Jaffer and Asmat Adamji, were indicted by an Islamabad district and sessions court in October 2021 but were later acquitted by the court.

Six officials of 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 Islamabad High Court (IHC), dismissing Zahir’s appeal against the conviction, 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 May of this year, the SC upheld the death sentence of Zahir for the murder of Noor.