Altamas Kabir

Early life and education

Altamas Kabir was born in Calcutta in 1948 to a prominent Bengali Muslim family from the district of Faridpur (now in Bangladesh). He studied law at the University of Calcutta, Kolkata. His father, Jehangir Kabir was a leading Congress politician and trade union leader from West Bengal who served as a Minister in the B.C. Roy and P.C. Sen ministries and also went on to become a minister in the first non-Congress government in West Bengal in 1967 with Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee as the Chief Minister of West Bengal. He studied in the eminent Mount Hermon School, Darjeeling and Calcutta Boys' School of Calcutta. Impressed by one of his argumentative article on social issues and their solutions, a teacher at Calcutta Boys' School advised him to pursue a career in law. After graduating with history from Presidency College, then affiliated with the University of Calcutta, he studied law.

His uncle Humayun Kabir was a Bengali writer and a minister in the Union Cabinets of Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shashtri.

Career

After completing his M.A and LL.B. from the University of Calcutta, Justice Kabir was admitted to the bar in 1973 and practiced civil and criminal law in Kolkata at the district court and the Calcutta High Court, Kolkata. He was made a permanent judge of Calcutta High Court on 6 August 1990. Justice Kabir assumed the office of acting Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court on 11 January 2005. Justice Kabir has the credit for the computerization of the Calcutta High Court and the City Civil Court and other Courts in Kolkata. He was appointed as Executive Chairman of the National Legal Services Authority on 14 January 2010. Under his chairmanship a national plan of action was taken up to be executed by all State Legal Services Authorities and Calendar for activities was put in place and also legal services to Transgender people was taken up as a new project of NALSA.

He became the Acting Chief Justice of the Jharkhand High Court on 3 January 2005, an elevation made permanent on 1 March 2005. He was elevated to the Supreme Court of India as Justice on 9 September 2005. On 29 September 2012 he became the 39th Chief Justice of India. After a tenure of a little over nine months, retired on 18 July 2013.During his tenure as Chief Justice he was the Chancellor of the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, the Chairman of the General Council of the Gujarat National Law University and the Visitor of the National Law School of India University He also taught as a Professor at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, where he used to teach a course on Law and the Child.

Judgments

During his tenure as a Supreme Court judge, Justice Kabir delivered several important judgments, particularly relating to human rights and election laws. One of the most important cases he presided over was that of Sandhya Manoj Wankhede of Amravati district in 2011. In this case the Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Kabir and Cyriac Joseph ruled that female relatives of a husband can also be booked under the Domestic Violence Act. Kabir also presided over the contempt case against prominent advocate and (the now disbanded) Team Anna member Prashant Bhushan after he alleged that half out of the last 16 CJIs had been corrupt. On 19 October 2012, he granted bail to journalist Syed Mohammed Ahmed Kazmi, arrested for his alleged involvement in the Israeli embassy vehicle blast case in which an Israeli diplomat's wife was injured. Pronouncing the order, Justice Kabir said, "We are unable to appreciate the procedure adopted by the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, which has been endorsed by the High Court and we are of the view that the appellant (Kazmi) acquired the right for grant of statutory bail on 17 July 2012, when his custody was held to be illegal by the additional sessions judge."

Controversies

There are many controversies with Altamas Kabir.

On 18 July 2013, i.e. the day of his retirement, a bench headed by Justice Kabir had quashed the National Eligibility and Entrance Test for Medical College entrance. This judgement was later set aside by a constitution bench of the Supreme Court."

Supreme Court collegium had stalled Justice Kabir's move to appoint SC Judge just before his retirement. "

Former Arunachal Pradesh Chief minister, Mr. Kalikho Pal named Justice Kabir Altamaas for giving wrong judgements in section 10.2 and 15.2 of his suicide note. "