Justice Musarrat Hilali takes oath as acting chief justice of PHC

The first woman chief justice of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), Justice Musarrat Hilali took the oath of office on Saturday as the acting chief justice of the Peshawar High Court (PHC).

Governor K-P Haji Ghulam Ali administered the oath to Justice Hilali. The caretaker chief minister, ministers, judges and lawyers of the PHC were also present on this occasion.

Justice Hilali was also the first woman additional advocate general of K-P from November 2001 to March 2004 and was later appointed as the first woman chairperson of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Environmental Protection Tribunal.

Justice Hilali also served as the first female ombudsperson for the Protection against Harassment of Women at Workplace.

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Born in Peshawar on August 8, 1961, Justice Hilali received a law degree from Peshawar University’s Khyber Law College. She enrolled as an advocate of district courts in 1983; as an advocate of the high court in 1988, and as an advocate of the Supreme Court in 2006.

She was the first woman to be elected as the secretary of the Peshawar Bar Association in 1988; the vice president of the bar twice from 1992 and 1994 and the general secretary of the bar from 1997 to 1998.

Justice Hilali has the honor to be the first woman to be elected twice as an executive member of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) respectively from 2007-2008 and 2008-2009.

She was elevated to the bench as an additional judge on March 26, 2013, and confirmed as a permanent judge of the PHC on March 13, 2014.

According to the seniority list of the high court, Justice Hilali will retire on August 7, 2023.