ISLAMABAD: Noor Mukadam’s convicted killer Zahir Jaffer on Wednesday filed a review petition in the Supreme Court against the top court’s May 20 verdict which upheld his death sentence for gruesome murder of the 27-year-old at his sprawling Islamabad mansion in 2021.
A three-member bench, led by Justice Hashim Kakar and comprising Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim and Justice Ali Baqar Najafi had upheld Jaffer’s death penalty and fine earlier this year. The apex court further reduced the sentences of co-accused i.e., Jaffer’s watchman and gardener and ruled that the punishments already served by both would suffice.
The high-profile case had garnered public attention back in 2021 when Jaffer, the son of an industrialist, brutally assaulted and murdered Mukaddam, the daughter of a former ambassador.
The victim had made repeated attempts to escape the night she was killed, but was blocked by two members of Jaffer’s household staff. The killer then resorted to torturing her with a knuckleduster and used a “sharp-edged weapon” to behead her.
Mukadam had made repeated attempts to escape the night she was killed, but was blocked by two members of Jaffer’s household staff.
In February 2022, a district and sessions court sentenced Jaffer to death, alongside a 25-year prison term with hard labour and a fine of Rs200,000, concluding the trial that continued for over four months.
Almost a year later, in March 2023, the Islamabad High Court upheld Jaffer’s death sentence and upgraded his 25-year sentence to an additional death penalty, on the appeals filed against the punishment awarded to the convicts.
Reliance on video recording, no medical assessment
In the review petition filed by Advocate Muhammad Usman Mirze, Jaffer has argued the prosecution’s reliance on video recordings.
The plea argues that the May 20 SC judgment failed to consider the fact that the recordings were not proved during the course of the trial.
“Portions of these so-called recordings, on the basis whereof the inference of ‘last seen’ has been drawn against the petitioner, were never played during the trial; rather only hearsay evidence thereof was led by the prosecution at the trial in the form of oral statement.
“So far as PFSA’s forensic Report pertaining to the purported video recordings […] the same too is not proved as per the law prevalent at the relevant date and time, as neither the scribe nor the executant (i.e. the concerned Forensic Expert/s) entered the witness box to authenticate the same on oath, rather it was merely produced in his statement by the learned Prosecutor while closing the prosecution evidence.
“As such, even the authenticity of the aforesaid video recordings do not stand proved in this case,” the plea contends.
