Justice Mussarat Hilali takes oath as Supreme Court judge

Peshawar High Court (PHC) Chief Justice Mussarat Hilali took oath as a Supreme Court judge, on Friday, becoming the second woman to be elevated to the apex court after Justice Ayesha Malik.

Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial administered oath to Justice Hilali; judges of the apex court including Justice Qazi Faez Isa, attorney general and lawyers also participated in the swearing-in ceremony.

The number of SC judges has increased to 16 with Justice Mussarat Hilali taking the oath.

Justice Hilali took oath as the first female chief justice of the PHC on April 1 after Justice Qaiser Rashid Khan’s retirement.

She 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.

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

Read Justice Ayesha Malik notified as first female judge of Supreme Court

Born in Peshawar on August 8, 1961, Justice Mussarat 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.

She has the honour of being 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.