While the country continues to try and digest one of the most horrific and gruesome murder cases in the country’s history, the main accused, Zahir Jaffer, who has been in police custody for the past three weeks, has apparently been getting preferential treatment despite the nature of his crimes. That fresh clothes and home-cooked food has been made available to Jaffer, who carried out an elaborate premeditated murder with a clear intent to dispose of the body and flee the country, smacks of influence peddling by his influential family that is reportedly well-connected in high-up places. Additionally, he was also transported without much formality to a public hospital in the capital for a check-up after complaining of a headache.
It is perhaps ironic that due to the case being so high-profile, in that the perpetrator, victim and their respective families are prominent affluent members of Islamabad’s upper class, that the concessions being afforded to Jaffer in jail, as a result of his social status, became public knowledge through social media and resultantly were discontinued, and he has since been moved to solitary confinement. Apart from severe overcrowding, one of the primary and more serious issues faced by the prison population of Pakistan is the lack of access to basic medical attention available to prisoners. Conditions are such that even garden variety infections can’t be treated because basic antibiotics aren’t administered on time, while the more serious chronic ailments are simply ignored. A majority of the detainees in the correctional system are not convicted but are in some phase of an excruciatingly slow judicial process, and they are not on trial for the killing and mutilation of a corpse as brutally as the killer in the Noor Mukadam case is. During the past few years, politicians and bureaucrats have spent varying amounts of time, often many months, incarcerated under some of the worst conditions imaginable for white collar crimes that remain unproven. While the prison system of Pakistan requires much needed reform, it is understandable that any such process, whenever it is formally and properly started, will take time. In the meantime, no undue leniency should be shown to a prisoner on the basis of influence, especially in a case that is a matter of such immense public interest where speedy justice is not only expected but imperative.
