NEW DELHI: Justice Leila Seth, the first woman judge of the Delhi High Court, passed away on Saturday after a brief illness at her home in Uttar Pradesh’s Noida. She was 86.

“She died of cardiac seizure last night, at about 10:28pm. My brother Vikram, sister and our other family members are here,” her son Shantum Seth said.

“About three weeks ago, she had fallen down and fractured her hip. She had undergone a surgery at Apollo Hospital and was discharged a week ago. We called the PCR, the ambulance but it was too late,” he said.

Seth, who broke many a glass ceiling in the legal field, was the first woman to have topped the London Bar exam, first woman judge of the Delhi High Court and also the first woman chief justice of a state high court (Himachal Pradesh).

Seth was also one of the three members of the Justice Verma Committee which was constituted in 2012 to recommend amendments to the criminal law so as to provide for quicker trial and enhanced punishment for criminals accused of committing sexual assault against women, post the gruesome December 16 gang rape in Delhi.

The eminent jurist, the mother of A Suitable Boy writer, was herself an author and her autobiography On Balance was a bestseller.

Seth had also authored Talking of Justice: People’s Rights in Modern India, published in 2014, which talked of several critical issues that she had engaged with in a legal career spanning over 50 years.

— By arrangement with The Times of India

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2017