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Noor Mukadam did not live with Zahir Jaffer, her friends clarified for the “millionth time” on Thursday. “Does visiting someone’s house and being held hostage by them count as ‘living with them’?”

The message came in the form of a post to the Justice for Noor Instagram account,* a page run by her friends and used to share updates about the case.

Mukadam was 27 years old when her body was found at Jaffer’s Islamabad residence in July 2021. In May, a three-judge Supreme Court bench, headed by Justice Hashim Kakar and including Justices Ishtiaq Ibrahim and Ali Baqar Najafi, upheld the death sentence awarded to Jaffer. He was convicted of murdering Mukadam by an Islamabad trial court in 2022.

In an additional note in the case, uploaded to the Supreme Court website today, Justice Najafi observed that “the present case is a direct result of a vice spreading in the upper society which we know as ‘living relationship’ [sic]”.

He went on to say that engaging in a relationship like that was a “direct revolt against Almighty Allah”, calling on the younger generation to note its “horrible consequences, such as in the present case, which is also a topic for the social reformist to discuss in their circles”.

His comments drew sharp criticism from both the general public as well as the Senate’s Functional Committee on Human Rights, which called them ’“ridiculous”.

The claim of a ‘live-in relationship’ is one that has been denied by Mukadam’s family. In the note, her friends wrote, “Having to repeat this again and again is not just frustrating – it is painful and deeply disrespectful.”

They urged everyone to pay attention to the source of the ‘misinformation’ — Jaffer. “The same man who claimed he didn’t speak Urdu (a lie), gave contradictory statements throughout interrogation, tried to blame everyone but himself, including his own staff, and committed the heinous acts of kidnapping, torturing, raping and murdering Noor.”

The post questioned why people were “quick to believe a murderer’s words over a victim’s dignity and her family’s truth”.

Labelling the misinformation “cruel”, the post listed the problems it causes every time this piece of false information resurfaced. “It distorts Noor’s truth and tries to rewrite her story, blames the victim instead of holding the murderer accountable, forces her family to relive trauma they have already endured far beyond what anyone should, and most importantly, it reduces her humanity to rumours and narratives she cannot defend herself against.”