S H Kapadia

Career

S. H. Kapadia was born in Mumbai in 1947. He graduated from Government Law College, Mumbai which is the oldest law college in Asia. Kapadia started his career as a class IV employee. He later became a law clerk in a lawyer's office in Mumbai. He joined Gagrat & Co., a law firm, as a clerk and later went on to work with Feroze Damania who was a highly respected "firebrand" labour lawyer. He later joined as an advocate in the Bombay High Court on 10 September 1974.

Kapadia was appointed as an additional judge of the Bombay High Court on 8 October 1991 and on 23 March 1993 he was appointed as a permanent judge. On 5 August 2003 he became the Chief Justice of the Uttarakhand High Court. On 18 December 2003 he was appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court. On 12 May 2010 he was sworn in as the Chief Justice of India by the then President Pratibha Patil. He retired on September 29, 2012. During his tenure as Chief Justice he was the Chairman of the General Council of the Gujarat National Law University and the Visitor of the National Law School of India University.

Personal life

Kapadia was married to Shahnaz and has a son who is a Chartered Accountant and a daughter. Justice Kapadia was a devout Zoroastrian. He was also interested in economics, public finance, theoretical physics, and Hindu and Buddhist philosophies. He died on 4 January 2016 in Mumbai.

Quashing of the appointment of Central Vigilance Commissioner

On March 3, 2011, a three-member bench headed by Kapadia, quashed the appointment of Chief Vigilance Commissioner, P.J. Thomas, made by the High Power Committee comprising Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj (dissenting). The judgment caused severe embarrassment for the Government and made Manmohan Singh admit the error in appointment. While the judgement was welcomed by most media pundits, some experts have expressed their concerns of miscarriage of justice. Former IAS officer, S. M. Murshed writes, 'the ratio decidendi of the Hon’ble Supreme Court is a bit difficult to comprehend, for, in the last analysis, the entire case against Thomas rested on a solitary, misconceived FIR which was filed as an afterthought and which should never have been filed. Given the facts, Manmohan Singh did no substantive wrong and he did not commit any error (in appointing Thomas).'

Dissenting judgement in Lalu Prasad Yadav's bail cancellation case

Kapadia was part of the three-member Supreme Court bench that decided a PIL filed by two NDA leaders seeking the cancellation of bail of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad and his wife and former Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi for their interference in the judicial process in the disproportionate assets (DA) and Income Tax cases against them.

The verdict, by majority of 2:1, went in favour of Prasad but Justice Kapadia gave a dissenting judgement saying the income tax department should have filed an appeal against the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) order. On the issue of promotion of judge Munni Lal Paswan, he said, while competence and suitability of two other judges, who were promoted to the post of Special Judge along with Paswan, were determined on the basis of annual confidential report (ACRs) and inspecting the judges' reports, the criteria was not applied while promoting Paswan who had been found to be slow in disposing cases.

Vodafone judgment

The Vodafone judgment was among the most high-profile of Justice Kapadia’s tenure.

Others

Justice Kapadia delivered a landmark judgement relating to succession of property in April 30, 2005 in which he ruled out the possibility of conducting the DNA test.

Quotes