Sarosh Homi Kapadia
Justice Sarosh Homi Kapadia
38th Chief Justice of India
In office 12 May 2010 – 28 September 2012
Appointed by	Pratibha Patil
Preceded by	K. G. Balakrishnan
Succeeded by	Altamas Kabir
Judge ofSupreme Court of India
In office 18 December 2003 – 11 May 2010
Nominated by	V. N. Khare
Appointed by	A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
2nd Chief Justice ofUttarakhand High Court
In office 5 August 2003 – 17 December 2003
Nominated by	V. N. Khare
Appointed by	A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
Preceded by	Ashok Desai Prakash Chandra Verma(acting)
Succeeded by	V. S. Sirpurkar Prakash Chandra Verma(acting)
Judge ofBombay High Court
In office 8 October 1991 – 4 August 2003
Nominated by	Ranganath Misra
Appointed by	R. Venkataraman
Personal details
Born	(1947-09-29)29 September 1947 Bombay,Bombay Presidency,Dominion of India
Died	4 January 2016(2016-01-04) (aged 68) Mumbai,India
Spouse	Shahnaz Kapadia

Sarosh Homi Kapadia (29 September 1947 – 4 January 2016) was the 38thChief Justice of India. He was the first chief justice born after thepartition of India (Dominion of India).^[1][2][3][4]

S. H. Kapadia was born in Bombay in 1947.^[5] He graduated fromGovernment Law College, Mumbai which is the oldest law college in Asia. Kapadia started his career as a class IV employee.^[6] He later became a law clerk in a lawyer's office inMumbai. He joined Gagrat & Co., a law firm, as a clerk and later went on to work with Feroze Damania, a highly respected "firebrand" labour lawyer. He later joined as an advocate in theBombay High Court on 10 September 1974.

Kapadia was appointed an additional judge of theBombay High Court on 8 October 1991, and on 23 March 1993 his appointment was made permanent. On 5 August 2003, he became the Chief Justice of theUttarakhand High Court. On 18 December 2003, he was appointed a judge of theSupreme Court.^[5] On 12 May 2010, he was sworn in as theChief Justice of India by PresidentPratibha Patil. He retired on 29 September 2012. During his tenure as chief justice^[7] he was the chairman of the General Council of theGujarat National Law University and the Visitor of theNational Law School of India University.^[8] Over the course of his time on the Supreme Court, Kapadia authored 305 judgments and sat on 1,074 benches.^[9]

AsChief Justice of India, Kapadia administered oath of office to the13th President of India,Pranab Mukherjee.

Kapadia was married to Shahnaz and has a son who is a chartered accountant and a daughter. Kapadia was a devoutZoroastrian. He was also interested in economics, public finance, theoretical physics, and Hindu and Buddhist philosophies.^[5] He died on 4 January 2016 in Mumbai.^[10]

On 3 March 2011, a three-member bench headed by Kapadia, quashed the appointment ofChief Vigilance Commissioner,Polayil Joseph Thomas, made by the High Power Committee comprising Prime MinisterManmohan Singh, Home MinisterP. Chidambaram and Leader of the OppositionSushma Swaraj (dissenting). The judgment caused severe embarrassment for the government and madeManmohan Singh admit the error in appointment. While the judgement was welcomed by most media pundits,^[11] some experts have expressed their concerns of miscarriage of justice. Former IAS officer, S. M. Murshed writes, 'theratio 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, misconceivedFIR 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).'^[12]

Kapadia was part of the three-memberSupreme Court bench that decided aPIL filed by twoNDA leaders seeking the cancellation of bail ofRashtriya Janata Dal chiefLalu Prasad and his wife and former Bihar Chief MinisterRabri Devi for their interference in the judicial process in thedisproportionate assets (DA) and Income Tax cases against them.^[13]

The verdict, by majority of 2:1, went in favour of Prasad, but 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 were not applied while promoting Paswan who had been found to be slow in disposing cases.^[13][14]

TheVodafone judgment was among the most high-profile of Kapadia's tenure.^[15]

Kapadia delivered a landmark judgement relating to succession of property in 30 April 2005 in which he ruled out the possibility of conducting the DNA test.^[16]

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• "I am proud to be an Indian. India is the only country where a member of the minority Parsi community with a population of 1,67,000, like myself, can aspire to attain the post of theChief Justice of India. These things do not happen in our neighbouring countries."
  • Chief Justice Kapadia speaking at the Independence Day celebrations in the Supreme Court.^[17][18]
• "I come from a poor family. I started my career as a class IV employee and the only asset I possess is integrity"
• "Right to life, we have said, includes environmental protection, right to live with dignity. Now we have included right to sleep, where are we going? It is not a criticism. Is it capable of being enforced? When you expand the right, the judge must explore the enforceability."
  • Chief Justice Kapadia during a lecture on "Jurisprudence of Constitutional Structure".^[19]
• "A day might come when the rule of law will stand reduced to a rope of sand."
  • Justice Kapadia reacting to a flood ofPublic Interest Litigations (PIL) being filed in the Supreme Court against corruption and non performing government authorities.^[20]

• S.H. Kapadia’s tenure targeted corruption in high places

• 1947 births
• 2016 deaths
• 20th-century Indian judges
• 20th-century Indian lawyers
• 21st-century Indian judges
• 21st-century Indian lawyers
• Chief justices of India
• Judges of the Bombay High Court
• Justices of the Uttarakhand High Court
• Parsi people from Mumbai
• Scholars from Mumbai

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