First woman CJ of J-K heads Manipur rehab panel

Justice Gita Mittal, who will head the three-member committee of former women judges of high courts appointed by the Supreme Court on Monday to oversee relief and rehabilitation of the victims of the Manipur ethnic violence, was the first woman chief justice of the Jammu and Kashmir high court.

Appointed as the first female head of the state judiciary on August 3, 2018, she retired on December 8, 2020.

She is an alumna of Delhi's prestigious Lady Shri Ram College.

Besides Mittal, the committee that will oversee relief and rehabilitation of the victims and compensation to them, includes Justices (retd) Shalini P Joshi, a former judge of the Bombay High Court, and Asha Menon, an ex-judge of the Delhi high court.

Former Maharashtra police chief Dattatray Padsalgikar will monitor the probe into criminal cases in the state riven by ethnic strife.

They will be submitting their reports to the apex court which will monitor all aspects of the violence, from prosecution to rehabilitation.

Justice Mittal, born on December 9, 1958, went to Lady Irwin Higher Secondary School and then to Lady Shri Ram College and graduated in Economics Honours in 1978.

A Campus Law Centre graduate in law, she was appointed as an Additional Judge of Delhi High Court in 2004.

Justice Mittal also served as the Acting Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. She earlier practised law in Delhi from 1981 to 2004.

Justice Shalini P Joshi, a former judge of the Bombay High Court, joined the judicial services in 1988 and worked as a judge in district courts before assuming the office of the Registrar General of the Bombay High Court in April, 2014.

She was later elevated as an Additional Judge of the Bombay high court on January 1, 2015.

The third member of the panel is Justice (retired) Asha Menon.

Menon was elevated to the post of permanent judge of the Delhi high court on May 27, 2019. She retired on September 16, 2022.

In 1985, she appeared for the Delhi Judicial Services examination and became a lower court judge in 1986. She was also the Member Secretary of Delhi State Legal Services Authority from 2008 to 2012.

Former Maharashtra police chief Dattatray Padsalgikar will monitor the probe into the criminal cases in Manipur.

Padsalgikar, a 1982 batch IPS officer, was on deputation to the Intelligence Bureau for a few years until he was named as the Mumbai police commissioner on January 30, 2016.

He served as the head of Mumbai police till June 29, 2018 before being elevated as the Maharashtra DGP.

On October 29, 2019, he was appointed as the Deputy National Security Advisor.