KARACHI: Sindh High Court Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah on Monday said that corruption among judicial officers or court staff would not be tolerated at any cost and the policy to root out the menace from the judiciary would continue.

This he said while briefly talking to the media persons shortly after taking the oath as the 24th chief justice of the SHC from Governor Ishratul Ibad at a simple and prestigious ceremony on the high court premises.

CJ Shah, who was appointed an SHC judge on Oct 25, 2005, became the first chief justice of the SHC to take the oath in Urdu.

Rangers chief Major General Bilal Akbar, provincial police chief, sitting and former judges of the high court and senior lawyers also attended the ceremony.

In response to a question, the chief justice said that over 40,000 cases were pending disposal at the SHC across the province. He said that efforts would be made to dispose of the cases filed till 2000 by June 2016.

Born on Independence Day in 1957 in Karachi, CJ Shah, son of an electronics engineer working in the Pakistan Air Force, received his early education in different parts of the country.

He was among those judges who refused to take the oath under General Pervez Musharraf’s Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) in 2007.

After graduating from Government Islamia College, Karachi, and obtaining a Bachelors of Law degree in 1984 from S.M. Law College, CJ Shah entered the legal profession in 1985 and practised at the bar for 20 years.

During his legal practice, he represented the federal government in many important cases before the Supreme Court and the high courts.

The chief justice, who did Masters in Law in 1988, was also a visiting faculty at S.M. Law College, Karachi, from 1995 till his elevation to the bench.

He was appointed standing counsel for the federal government in 2002 and thereafter as deputy attorney general in 2004.

Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2015