Noor Mukadam case: Crimes against women betrayal of divine and national values, SC says

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Thursday emphasised that, as an Islamic Republic, Pakistan’s constitutional duty was to ensure that society exhibited exemplary behaviour in protecting, honouring and upholding the rights of women, treating any violation of their sanctity as a betrayal of both divine law and national values rather than simply witnessing an escalation in cases of femicide.

The observation came in a 12-page detailed judgment to explain why a three-judge bench on June 4 had thrown away Jaffer’s review petition, thus upholding the death sentence awarded to him for the murder of Noor Mukadam in 2021.

On May 20, 2025, the SC confirmed the death penalty awarded to Jaffer by rejecting his appeal for the murder, which sent shockwaves through society.

27-year-old Noor was found brutally murdered at Jaffer’s upscale residence in Sector F-7/4 on July 20, 2021. Following the discovery of the body, Jaffer was arrested as the prime suspect in the case.

A trial court in Islamabad on Feb 24, 2022, sentenced Jaffer to death for Noor’s murder. The court also found him guilty of rape, handing down 25 years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs200,000.

A division bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on March 14, 2025 upheld the death sentence.

Authored by Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim, a member of the bench, the judgment explained that a petition under Article 188 of the Constitution to review court judgments or orders was not, and could not be permitted to be, an appeal in disguise.

It does not provide a forum for rehearing the case, re-arguing matters already canvassed and decided, reappraising evidence, re-evaluating ocular testimony or reopening concluded questions of fact, the judgment explained.

In criminal matters, the jurisdiction of review is circumscribed within narrow contours and can be invoked only where an error apparent on the face of the record is demonstrated, or where interference is warranted in the interest of justice or to prevent abuse of the process of the court, the judgment said.

The error contemplated must be patent, manifest and self-evident from the record itself; it must not require elaborate argumentation, detailed scrutiny of evidence or a process of reasoning akin to appellate adjudication. Any attempt to invite the court to reassess evidence or revisit findings of fact is clearly beyond the scope of review jurisdiction, the judgment added.

Regarding the plea of mental illness of the convict, the court said it had carefully examined the record and found no substance in it, since the plea did not find favour with the trial court, the High Court or the SC at the stage of deciding the criminal petition.

The principal document relied upon by Advocate Khawaja Haris Ahmed, counsel for the petitioner, in support of the plea of mental illness of Zahir Zakir was a letter issued by Dr Philip Hopley, MRCPsych, Consultant Psychiatrist, Harley Street, London, the judgment noted.

The letter showed that the petitioner was examined on April 21, 2015, and was found to be suffering from a drug-induced psychotic episode. However, the same document further recorded that the petitioner was referred for psychological treatment and remained engaged in a course of therapy for approximately six months, after which he made a full recovery.

The SC also expressed grave concern over increasing instances of femicide. The structural architecture of this crime indicates that the termination of a woman’s life is rarely an isolated, spontaneous event; rather, it represents the lethal culmination of a systematic, gender-motivated continuum of violence, the judgment regretted.

According to the Statistical Framework for Measuring the Gender-Related Killing of Women and Girls, jointly developed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and UN Women, the category of femicide having the largest number of victims is intentional homicide perpetrated by current or former intimate partners.

Global data compiled under this international framework, the judgment said, revealed the harrowing reality that approximately 50,000 women and girls lost their lives in 2024 at the hands of an intimate partner or an immediate family member.

Extensive criminological research and academic studies tracking the trend of intimate partner violence consistently show that lethal escalations are preceded by identifiable, risk-inherent behaviours such as coercive control, stalking and psychological terror.

The statistical data reproduced above dispels the conventional assumption that women enjoy the greatest degree of safety within domestic settings. On the contrary, it demonstrates that the private sphere, rather than serving as a sanctuary of security, is statistically the setting in which women are most vulnerable to violence and abuse, the judgment regretted.