According to an announcement from the Ministry of Law and Justice, President Dr. Arif Alvi named Justice Musarrat Hilali the first female chief justice of the Peshawar High Court (PHC).
According to the announcement, she was promoted to the position because she was the most senior PHC judge. She will begin serving on April 1 “until the appointment of a regular chief justice by the Judicial Commission of Pakistan.” A copy of the notification is available at Dawn.com. Following Justice Tahira Safdar, who served as chief justice of the Balochistan High Court from September 2018 to October 2019, she will be the second woman to hold the position of chief justice of a high court.
Hilali, who was born in Peshawar on August 8, 1961, earned a law degree from Khyber Law College of the University of Peshawar. She first became a registered advocate in 1983 for district courts, then in the high court in 1988, and ultimately in the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 2006. She was the first female elected to the position of secretary at the bar in 1988–1989, twice elected to vice president in 1992–1994, and to general secretary in 1997–1998. As an executive member of the Supreme Court Bar Association in 2007-2008 and 2008-2009, she made history by becoming the first female to do so twice.
From November 2001 until March 2004, Hilali served as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s first female additional advocate general. She was then named the first female chairwoman of the KP Environmental Protection Tribunal. She was also the first woman to hold the position of Ombudsman for the Protection against Harassment of Women at Work. On March 26, 2013, Hilali was promoted to the bench as an additional judge, and on March 13, 2014, she was confirmed as a permanent PHC judge.
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