ISLAMABAD: Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa took oath as the 26th Chief Justice of Pakistan at a ceremony at Aiwan-i-Sadr in Islamabad on Friday.
Chief justice Khosa will serve as top judge for approximately 337 days and is scheduled to retire on Dec 21, 2019.
President Arif Alvi administered oath to Justice Khosa before an audience of top government and military officials, Supreme Court judges, senior lawyers and dignitaries.
Prime Minister Imran Khan, Chief of Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, Chief of the Air Staff Aasim Zaheer, Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Zafar Mahmood Abbasi, Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani, National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser, Sindh Governor Imran Ismail, and members of the federal cabinet, all attended the ceremony.
A number of foreign dignitaries also took part in today’s ceremony; Chief Justice of India Justice Ranjan Gogoi, President Supreme Court of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Narin Ferdi Sefik, Chief Judge State of Borno Nigeria Kashim Zannah, former senior puisne judge Supreme Court of India and President Governing Committee of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute Justice Madan Bhimarao Lokur, Savita Lokur (spouse), and Sandra E Oxner, former judge and founding president Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute, Canada.
Justice Khosa has, over the course of his nearly two decade long career, decided about 55,000 cases. A special bench headed by him has decided over 10,000 cases of a criminal nature since 2014.
Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa was born on December 21, 1954 in Dera Ghazi Khan. He is married with two daughters and four grandchildren. The judge, who is now 64 years old, received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Punjab and his LLM degree from Queens College at Cambridge in 1978.
He enrolled as an advocate at the Lahore High Court in 1979, and then at the Supreme Court in 1985. As an advocate, he conducted over 600 cases. On February 18, 2010, Justice Khosa was elevated to the position of a Supreme Court judge.
When General Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in November 2007, suspending the Constitution and demanded the judges of the superior judiciary retake their oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO), Justice Khosa like then-Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, and many other senior judges, refused to retake the oath.
They were suspended from their duties.
On 18 August 2008, he was restored to his prior position as High Court Justice as a result of a lawyer’s movement to restore the “deposed judges.”
On February 18, 2010, Justice Khosa was elevated to the position of a Supreme Court judge.
Justice Khosa is known for adding lyrical flair in his observations and judgments — most recently in the landmark Panama papers verdict that de-seated Nawaz Sharif as the prime minister in 2017.
His dissenting note in the split 2:3 verdict — Khosa was among the two who held Nawaz should be disqualified — on April 20, 2017 began with a reference to the popular 1969 novel ‘The Godfather’ by Mario Puzo in which he pointed out an epigraph by Honore de Balzac selected by the author: “Behind every great fortune there is a crime”, saying that “It is ironical and a sheer coincidence that the present case revolves around that very sentence attributed to Balzac.
Justice Khosa has authored multiple books during his career, including ‘Heeding the Constitution’,’ Constitutional Apologues’, and ‘Judging with Passion and Breaking New Ground’. He also edited and compiled ‘The Constitution of Pakistan, 1973’ with all amendments up to date.
The next in line to take reins of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Justice Khosa previously served as the acting chief justice from June 5-11 in 2017, June 29 to July 5 in 2017, May 14-30 in 2018, and Dec 17-23 in 2018. Justice Khosa will remain the country’s top judge for 11 months and is scheduled to retire on Dec 21, 2019.
