Zahir Jaffer raped, tortured Noor Mukadam before murder: forensic report
She was murdered and then beheaded on July 20
The report prepared by the Punjab Forensic Agency has reportedly revealed that Noor Mukadam was raped and tortured by Zahir Jaffer before murder.
The agency confirmed that Jaffer’s fingerprints were present on the murder weapon and the CCTV footage obtained from his house showed both him and Noor Mukadam.
The report said that the postmortem examination of the victim was conducted 12 hours after her murder.
The agency has submitted its report to the Islamabad police.
Who’s who in the case:
Key accused: Zahir Jaffer (lawyer Mohammad Daniyal)
Zahir’s father: Zakir (lawyer Rizwan Abbasi)
Zahir’s mother: Asmat Adnan (lawyer Asad Jamal)
Noor Mukadam’s father: Shaukat Mukadam (lawyer Shah Khawar)
Noor Mukadam, 27, the daughter of former diplomat Shaukat Mukadam, was found murdered at a residence in Islamabad’s Sector F-7/4 on July 20.
The investigation officer Abdul Sattar told SAMAA Digital that CCTV footage obtained from Zahir’s residence showed that when Noor jumped from the balcony and tried to run outside, the chowkidar closed the gate.
The body was brought to the hospital at around 12:10am on the day of the incident but the post-mortem was conducted the next morning at around 9am, said Abdul Sattar. He said that according to the postmortem report, the murder took place around at 7pm on July 20.
On August 5, a court had rejected the bail petitions by the suspect’s parents. Zahir’s parents had separately applied for bail on the grounds that they had no connection whatsoever with the crime of their son Zahir Jaffer.
At a previous hearing, Zahir’s parents’ lawyers had questioned the autopsy report. According to the IO, generally the postmortem report gives a margin of two hours in assessing the time of a murder case as in most cases the body is sent to a mortuary where refrigeration is factored in when assessing the time of death.
Journalists asked why Zahir Jaffer’s statement had not been recorded yet under Section 164 of the PPC. The IO said that this sort of statement could only be recorded when an accused is in judicial custody and not when in police custody. It was only recently that the judicial magistrate had approved judicial remand of the principal accused and he was sent to prison in Rawalpindi.
The IO also said also gave information about how the police learned about the murder. A mobile unit was moving around at Turbat Road when it got a tip from an unidentified person that some untoward situation was taking place.
A first information report (FIR) was registered later on the same day against Jaffer, who was arrested from the scene, under Section 302 (premeditated murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code on the complaint of the victim’s father.
Later on, three more sections were added to the case in a supplementary application on July 24. These sections were made part of the case based on revelations made by Zahir Jaffer in front of police investigators during his physical remand. This supplementary application led to the arrest of Zahir Jaffer’s parents.
