Dorab Patel

Dorab Patel was a Pakistani jurist and an academic who served as the 9th Chief Justice of Pakistan from 23 September 1977 until resigning on 25 March 1981. He signed the death warrant for former Prime Minister Z.A Bhutto in a controversial murder case. Bhutto was executed on April 4, 1979. Educated as an economist at the DAV College and the Punjab University in Lahore, he served as a civil servant of the Indian Civil Service as an appointee to lead the municipal governance in the British India in 1944. He continued serving in the civil service after the independence of Pakistan as a result of partition of British India in 1947 and subsequently elevated as a judge in the Sindh High Court in 1957. In 1962, he was nominated to serve on the Supreme Court and later appointed as Chief Justice of Lahore High Court in 1970 before his reappointment as a Senior Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 1971. He 1972, he earned public and international notability when he co-chaired the War Enquiry Commission with Chief Justice Hamoodur Rahman to investigate the economic and military collapse of Pakistan in a war against India in 1971 that led to the separation of East Pakistan as Bangladesh . He was known for his judicial conservative philosophical leanings and is noted in country's political history for providing legality for the martial law upheld by chief of army staff General Zia-ul-Haq to restore law and order, in light of doctrine of necessity, as part of his conservative leanings. ² He also heard the case of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and constituted a 7-member (7 supreme court judges) bench to decide on the appeal of the capital sentence by the Lahore High Court for authorizing the death sentence of the ex-Prime Minister of Pakistan. ¹ After the death sentence of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was convicted of murdering through proxy the father of one of his political opponents, Haq took up the case against General Zia-ul-Haq's breaking his promise of holding elections. He died of cancer in 1995, at the age of 77, in Lahore. He was buried with full state honors in Lahore. He is widely respected and admired as one of the eminent jurists of Pakistan.