Justice Najafi | Pakistan

The National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW), a statutory body working for women rights, on Friday condemned the “misogynistic and irresponsible remarks” made by Justice Ali Baqar Najafi on the Noor Mukadam case, saying that they reflected a “harmful mindset that shifts responsibility away from the perpetrators of violence and onto women themselves”. Justice Najafi — a member of the three-judge bench of the Supreme Court that had upheld the death penalty awarded to Noor’s murderer — attributed the ghastly 2021 murder to what he described as a vice prevalent in society. In his additional note, which surfaced on Wednesday, Justice 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]”. It appeared the judge was referring to a live-in relationship, where two unmarried individuals in a romantic relationship cohabitate. The jud­ge also observed that societal compulsions in such...

Justice Ali Baqar Najafi, who is now part of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), has observed that the Noor Mukadam case is the direct result of a “vice” spreading in society known as “living relationship”, it emerged on Wednesday. It appeared the judge was referring to a live-in relationship, where two unmarried individuals in a romantic relationship cohabitate. Noor, aged 27 years, was found murdered at the Islamabad residence of Zahir Zakir Jaffer in July 2021. In May, a three-judge Supreme Court bench, led by Justice Hashim Kakar and including Justices Ishtiaq Ibrahim and Najafi, had upheld the death sentence awarded to Zahir, who was convicted by an Islamabad trial court in 2022. 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 n...