The Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights on Thursday condemned Judge Ali Baqar Najafi’s comments in the Noor Mukadam case that came to light a day earlier as “ridiculous”.
Justice Najafi, who now sits on the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), observed that the Noor Mukadam case was the direct result of a widespread “vice” in society known as “cohabitation relationship.” It seemed that the judge was referring to a cohabitation relationship, in which two single people who maintain a romantic relationship cohabit.
At a meeting today, the committee questioned what “would happen to the conviction rate in cases against women, which is already shameful, if a judge himself had made such comments.”
The committee convened advocates general, attorneys general, police officers and all relevant authorities due to the low conviction rate.
The conviction rate in gender-based violence (GBV) cases is reportedly as low as 1.2 percent due to weak prosecution and judicial delays.
Women’s rights advocates say there is also no centralized database on gender violence, making data analysis difficult. Furthermore, due to resource limitations, crisis shelters and centres, gender-based violence courts, police protection cells and the like are underfunded.
Noor, 27, was found murdered at Zahir Zakir Jaffer’s residence in Islamabad in July 2021. In May, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Justice Hashim Kakar and including Justices Ishtiaq Ibrahim and Najafi, had sustained the death sentence imposed on Zahir, who was convicted by a trial court in Islamabad in 2022.
Last month, the high court had taken Zakir’s review petition challenging the capital punishment imposed on him. During the hearing, Justice Najafi told senior advocate Khawaja Haris Ahmed, representing the convict, that it would be more appropriate for him to start his arguments after going through the additional note which he had not yet issued at that time.
Judge Najafi was subsequently jury as an FCC judge, established earlier this month after the 27th Constitutional Amendment.
in a additional note On the Noor murder case, which was uploaded on the Supreme Court website on Wednesday, Justice Najafi confirmed the sentence handed down to Zahir and observed that “the present case is the direct result of a vice that is spreading in high society and which we know as ‘living relationship’. [sic]”.
He stressed that such relationships ignored “social compulsions” and “defied not only the law of the land but also the personal law” under Sharia.
The judge’s observations, which emerged just one day after the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against WomenIt also drew criticism from many on social media, including lawyers and journalists.
