Mr Jafri was born in Badayun in 1927. He graduated from Bareilly College which was affiliated with the Agra University. His father Syed Shahid Ali, a hakim and poet, moved to Larkana with his family following the partition of the Subcontinent.
Mr Jafri began his journalistic career in June 1947, as a reporter for the Orient Press of India news agency in New Delhi. He came to Karachi in August on a brief assignment to cover the inauguration of Pakistan. As it turned out, there was no going back. However, two years later he was back in New Delhi, this time as a foreign correspondent representing the Associated Press of Pakistan. The stint made Mr Jafri the first Pakistani newsmen to become a foreign correspondent. Before joining the Associated Press of Pakistan, Mr Jafri worked for some time at The Evening Times of Z.A. Suleri.