Islamabad (Staff Report/Agencies): A district and sessions court in Islamabad on Thursday indicted at least 12 persons, including prime accused Zahir Jaffer, for their alleged involvement in the murder of Noor Mukadam.
Besides Zahir, the court framed charges against Zahir’s parents, Zakir Jaffer and Asmat Adamjee, their three household staff, Iftikhar, Jan Muhammad and Jameel, and six Therapy Works employees, identified as Tahir Zahoor, Amjad, Dilip Kumar, Abdul Haq, Wamiq and Samar Abbas.
After Additional Sessions Judge Ata Rabbani indicted the accused, all of them pleaded not guilty to the charges. The court also summoned the prosecution’s witnesses on October 20 to start the trial.
Earlier, challan (investigation report) of Islamabad police submitted before the trial court claimed that murder of the daughter of a former diplomat could have been avoided if Zakir Jaffer, father of prime suspect Zahir Jaffer had reported the crime to police in time.
According to the report, Zahir Jaffer had confessed to killing Noor and a DNA report confirmed she was raped. Zahir Jaffer also gave a statement about beheaded Noor, the challan read.
The report added that Zahir said that when Noor refused to marry him, he forcibly locked her up in a room. He told his guard to not let anyone in and not let her out. He hid her mobile phone in another room, which was retrieved by the police from a closet in his house on his identification.
Police further stated that Zakir Jaffer helped his son after the murder by saying that he “need not panic as he was sending men to dispose of the body and get him out of there”.
The interim charge sheet also stated that evidence had been gathered against 12 suspects in the case and that Noor had been subjected to sexual assault before her murder, according to a DNA report.
Mukadam, a daughter of a former Pakistani diplomat, was found brutally murdered in a posh neighbourhood of the federal capital on July 20. Subsequently, the police charged Zahir Jaffer, a US national, with murder.
