The Supreme Court’s Thursday dismissal of Zahir Jaffer’s review plea marks a rare moment of legal closure in a case that has haunted Pakistan’s conscience since the blood-curdling murder of Noor Mukadam in 2021. The court maintained its earlier verdict upholding the death sentence first handed down by an Islamabad sessions court in February 2022. The appellate court had then noted that the murderer must pay for the crime with his life.
The brutality of the crime (Noor was tortured, raped, murdered and finally beheaded in the two days she was held hostage at Jaffer’s residence), which shook the country out of its reverie to take note of the “gender terrorism epidemic,” made this case particularly exceptional. It moved through the courts under the gaze of citizens, journalists, rights advocates and a family that refused to disappear into silence. That visibility mattered. So did the fact that Noor’s father had the stamina to keep pushing against delay, fatigue and the familiar evasions of privilege. Sadly, many families in Pakistan do not have that protection. UNFPA noted that 28 per cent of women aged 15 to 49 in Pakistan have experienced physical violence. More recently, the Ministry of Human Rights informed the National Assembly that 173,367 cases of violence against women were reported nationwide between 2021 and 2024, including 16,135 rape cases, 1,636 gang-rape cases, 1,553 honour killings and nearly 90,000 cases of kidnapping and abduction. Unsurprisingly, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025 ranked Pakistan at 148th out of 148 countries, placing us at the bottom of the global index, despite efforts in recent years to introduce new laws to protect women and special courts to hear cases of gender-based violence.
This is why even as we celebrated the closing of one escape route, it would take utmost naivety to close one’s eyes to the larger wound. Names such as Shahrukh Jatoi and Natasha Danish are often invoked because they represent a fear deeply lodged in the public mind that power can bend the moral arc of the law after the headlines fade.
The court’s rejection of the mental-health defence also deserves sober treatment. Mental illness must never be mocked, dismissed or made harder to discuss in a society already brutal towards those who seek help. However, far more damaging are cynical attempts to turn illness into a shield against accountability. Every single insanity defence to negate mens rea insults victims, burdens courts and deepens suspicion against those genuinely living with psychological distress.
Noor Mukadam’s case should not be remembered only because one powerful convict finally ran out of appeals. Its real measure lies elsewhere: whether police investigate with competence, prosecutors argue with seriousness, courts resist delay, and society refuses to ration justice in accordance with social class, deep pockets or political influence. One Noor received the law’s full attention. The question is whether every Noor can. *