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.
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.
