The Supreme Court of Pakistan has dismissed Zahir Jaffer’s appeal against the death sentence awarded to him in the Noor Mukadam murder case.
A three-member bench presided by Justice Hashim Kakar, and comprising Justices Ishtiaq Ibrahim and Ali Baqar Najafi, upheld the sentence after hearing final arguments on Tuesday.
Previously, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) had also upheld Jaffer’s death sentence issued by the trial court and converted his jail term for rape charges into an additional death penalty.
Twenty-seven-year-old Noor Mukadam, daughter of former Pakistani diplomat Shaukat Mukadam, was murdered and beheaded in a posh neighbourhood of Islamabad in July 2021. The police charged Jaffer, a US national and the heir to Jaffer Group of Companies – one of Pakistan’s wealthiest families – with murder.
Defence counsel Salman Safdar argued that the prosecution’s entire case relied on CCTV footage and DVR recordings, stressing that the evidence must be beyond reasonable doubt to support a conviction. He questioned the chain of custody and insisted the footage could not be accepted without thorough verification.
At the outset of the hearing, Zahir’s counsel contended that any evidence against his client “must be beyond doubt”, arguing that the court could not “go beyond footage presented in the court”.
He said the prosecution presented the footage on a USB at the IHC, but it could not be played.
At this point, a lawyer of the co-accused — Mohammad Iftikhar (watchman) and Jan Mohammad (gardener), whose 10-year sentences were also upheld by the IHC — presented his arguments briefly.
The lawyer detailed the sentences, recalling that the watchman and gardener were accused of “stopping the victim from fleeing”.
Justice Najafi observed, “If the suspects had not stopped the victim, then the situation would have been different.”
The lawyer asserted that the two co-accused had “no crime other than being present in the house” at the time of the murder.
“What was the need to work more than [what] the salary [is paid for]?” Justice Kakar remarked.
In response, Justice Kakar noted that the defence had already accepted the footage’s authenticity earlier and highlighted that forensic reports confirmed the videos had not been tampered with. He further stated that the footage was captured by an automated system without human intervention, rendering doubts about selective editing irrelevant.
