Justice Musarrat Hilali is set to become the first female chief justice of the Peshawar High Court (PHC) on April 1, after the retirement of current Chief Justice Qaiser Rasheed on March 30.
However, the PHC’s senior most judge after CJ Rasheed, Justice Rooh Ul Amin Khan, will also serve as the PHC chief Justice for one day from March 30 to March 31, according to a separate notification issued by President Dr Arif Alvi. Justice Hilali will be the second woman to be elevated as a chief justice of a high court in the country. Justice Tahira Safdar was the first female jurist to break the glass ceiling. Justice Safdar served as the chief justice of the Balochistan High Court (BHC) from September 2018 to October 2019.
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 to 1994 and the general secretary of the bar from 1997 to 1998. She 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. Justice Hilali was also the first female additional advocate general of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from November 2001 to March 2004 and was later appointed as the first female chairperson of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Environmental Protection Tribunal. She also served as the first female ombudsperson for the Protection against Harassment of Women at Workplace. 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. Last year in January, Justice Ayesha Malik made history after being sworn in as the first female judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
