Home Latest News Islamabad Police to Seek Exit Control Listing for Noor Mukadam’s Murder Suspect

Islamabad Police to Seek Exit Control Listing for Noor Mukadam’s Murder Suspect

by Staff Report

File photo of victim Noor Mukadam

Investigation team also tasked with seeking international criminal records of alleged killer Zahir Jaffer

Islamabad Inspector General of Police (IGP) Qazi Jamilur Rehman on Friday directed the team probing the killing of Noor Mukadam to urge the federal government to place suspect Zahir Jaffer’s name on the Exit Control List (ECL) to prevent any possibility of him fleeing the country.

During a meeting with the investigation team, the IGP also told them to approach the relevant authorities to secure any international criminal record of Jaffer, including from the U.S. and U.K. According to a statement issued by police, the police chief stressed that all evidence collected from the crime scene should be sent for forensic analysis.

“The case should be concluded in light of concrete evidence at the earliest,” the IGP was quoted as saying in the statement. “All the requirements for justice should be met so that the culprit be handed severe punishment,” he added.

Jaffer allegedly killed Noor, 27, the daughter of former Pakistani diplomat Shaukat Mukadam, at his residence in Islamabad’s Sector F-7/4 on Tuesday night. According to the First Information Report registered against the suspect, he has been charged under Section 302 (premeditated murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code on the complaint of the victim’s father.

Shaukat Mukadam has submitted that he and his wife had left their home in Islamabad on July 19 and had returned to find their daughter missing. Upon trying to contact her, he said, they had found that her cellphone had been switched off. The FIR states that Noor eventually called her parents and informed them that she was traveling to Lahore with some friends and would return in a day or two.

A day later, Shaukat has submitted, suspect Zahir called him and claimed that Noor was not with him. The ex-diplomat says he and Zahir’s father, businessman Zakir Jaffer, were acquaintances. That night, adds the FIR, police called Shaukat and informed him that his daughter had been murdered. The FIR states that Shaukat found his daughter “brutally murdered with a sharp-edged weapon and beheaded.”

Initially the police had said that Noor was shot dead before being beheaded, but a postmortem has found that she suffocated to death, suggesting strangulation. However, police have stressed, the investigation is still ongoing. Suspect Zahir is currently on a three-day remand, with police saying they are investigative the motive for his alleged crime.

The team investigating the incident has already recorded statements of the mother of the victim, as well as the psychotherapists—affiliated with Therapy Works—who are were called to subdue Zahir prior to the police. According to sources, their responses have not satisfied the investigating team.

Therapy Works is a drug rehabilitation and counseling center where Jaffer reportedly sought treatment and also worked in some capacity in the past. Police have stressed that when suspect Jaffer was taken into custody he was “completely in his senses,” with some officials claiming he might be posing as “mentally ill” to avoid punishment.

Investigators have not ruled out premeditated murder, noting the alleged killer had a plane ticket booked to fly out of Pakistan.

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