Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa: The poet unswayed by power

The tenure of Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa as the top judge of Pakistan will come to end at midnight tonight (December 20). The outgoing jurist was sworn in as the 26th chief justice on January 18, 2019 at a ceremony held in Islamabad. He was preceded by Mian Saqib Nisar and will be succeeded by Justice Gulzar Ahmed. 

Compared to his immediate predecessor, Justice Khosa was not proactive. During his speech at the full court reference for Nisar, Justice Khosa had given an indication of things to come, saying that suo motu powers will be used sparingly in his tenure, and that he, too, would like to build a 'dam' but against judicial and legal issues — a reference to Nisar's efforts to build an actual dam.

During his 11-month long term as the chief justice, the Supreme Court took no suo motu notices. 

However, Justice Khosa did not shy away from passing landmark verdicts in several highly sensitive cases that made it to the court. His judgments were hailed as historic by some, but left others puzzled. 

Justice Khosa, before assuming the top judicial office, was on the Supreme Court bench in 2018 that overturned the death penalty of Asia Bibi — a Christian woman who was wrongly accused of blasphemy. 

A few weeks before his retirement, he was once again in the headlines when he took up a petition challenging the extension in tenure of Chief of Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa. After suspending the notification of the army chief's extension, he eventually gave the government six months to legislate on the matter or the COAS would stand retired.

During his judicial career he came to be known as the "poetic judge" for his tendency to cite works of literature in his rulings. Most famously, in the judgement that disqualified former premier Nawaz Sharif for life, he had quoted a line penned by French novelist and playwright Honore De Balzac, which had prefaced the mafia-crime thriller The Godfather by Mario Puzo: 'Behind every great fortune lies a great crime'. 

Widely regarded as one of the finest legal minds produced by Pakistan, and a top expert in criminal law, here's a look at the legal career of the outgoing chief justice.

Academic career, rise to Supreme Court judge

Born on December 21, 1954 in Dera Ghazi Khan, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa passed his matriculation examinations from Multan in 1969 and completed his intermediate from Government College, Lahore in 1971.

He went to the University of Punjab for his undergraduate and master's degrees, before going to the UK, where he obtained his LLM from Queens College at Cambridge in 1978.

Justice Khosa subsequently taught at a number of prestigious schools, including the Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan; Pakistan College of Law, Lahore; Civil Services Academy, Lahore; and the National Institute of Public Administration, Lahore.

He enrolled as an advocate of the Lahore High Court in 1979, and then at the Supreme Court in 1985.

He became a judge of the Lahore High Court on May 21, 1998 and held the position till February 17, 2010.

In 2007, when former president General (retired) Pervez Musharraf imposed a state of emergency in the country and detained several judges of the superior courts, Justice Khosa was part of a group of judges, including deposed former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who refused to take oath under a Provisional Constitutional Order.

On February 18, 2010, Justice Khosa was elevated to the position of a Supreme Court judge.

Major decisions

CJP Khosa was part of the seven-member bench that served former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani with a contempt of court charge back in 2012. Gilani was eventually disqualified from office after he was convicted of the charge and forced to resign. 

In October 2015, he headed a three-member bench that maintained the conviction of Mumtaz Qadri — the murderer of former Punjab governor Salman Taseer — by an Anti Terrorism Court. Qadri was hanged for the offence in February 2016. 

In April 2017, Justice Khosa had penned a dissenting note in the Panamagate case against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, in which a bench of the top court had not disqualified the premier, instead forming a Joint Investigation Team to investigate the matter. 

In February 2018, he was on the Supreme Court bench that found PML-N's Nehal Hashmi guilty in a contempt case and barred him from holding a public office for five years.

In October 2018, he was a part of a three-member Supreme Court bench that had acquitted Asia Bibi on blasphemy charges. In the judgement, he had penned a concurrent opinion to that of then chief justice Mian Saqib Nisar. The verdict was met with widespread protests across the country by Khadim Hussain Rizvi-led religio-political party Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan.

In November 2019, a Justice Khosa-led Supreme Court bench had suspended the notification of Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa's extension, reminding the attorney general of Pakistan that "the prime minister does not have the power" to grant such extensions.

In an earlier hearing of the same case, he had told the attorney general that "you have made the army chief a shuttlecock."

Did what I think was right: Justice Khosa in farewell speech

In his farewell speech as chief justice during a full court reference today, Justice Khosa said he always did what he thought was right and was worth doing and it did not matter to him as to what the reaction or consequences would or could be.

"I believe that a judge, besides being just and fair to all, should have a heart of a lion, nerves of steel, wisdom of a sage, expression of a man of letters and approach full of empathy and compassion. These were the ideals that I strived to follow but I do not know how successfully," he said.

"I can, however, confidently say, and Allah Almighty be my witness for it, that I always tried to be true to the oath of my office. I gave my hundred percent to the job, tried to perform beyond the call of duty, never raised my voice, spoke mainly through my pen, never delayed a judgment unduly and after giving the best years of my life to this public service I lay down my robes today with a conscience which is clear as crystal.

"I, however, in all humility at my command, seek forgiveness from all those in whose cases my judgment might have gone wrong unwittingly and also from those whose feelings I might have hurt unintentionally,” he concluded.