ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Judge, a part of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), Ali Baqar Najafi, opined that the Noor Mukadam murder case is the direct result of a “vice” spreading in society known as “living relationship,” Dawn reported.
In his Wednesday statement, the judge from the socially conservative country appeared to have been indicating towards a live-in relationship, where two unmarried individuals live together.
Noor, 27, was found murdered at the Islamabad residence of Zahir Zakir Jaffer in July 2021. In May, a three-judge Supreme Court bench, led by Hashim Kakar and including Ishtiaq Ibrahim and Najafi, had upheld the death sentence awarded to Zahir, who was convicted by an Islamabad trial court in 2022, as per Dawn.
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, Najafi was sworn in as a judge of the FCC, established earlier this month after the 27th Constitutional Amendment, as per Dawn.
In an additional note on the Noor murder case, which was uploaded on the SC website on Wednesday, 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.
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, Dawn reported.
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, as per Dawn.