CHIEF justice Sajjad Ali Shah shot to fame when the case challenging the dismissal of the first Nawaz Sharif government came up for hearing in 1993. Heads turned when the Sindhi judge of the supreme court bench differed completely with the rest of his colleagues. In his dissenting judgement, he gave grounds for why the first Punjabi prime minister's government should not be restored, also pointing out that a Sindhi prime minister like Benazir Bhutto had been sacked on similar grounds.
This fact was not lost on Benazir, then the leader of opposition and the greatest beneficiary of the forced resignation of Nawaz Sharif and Ghulam Ishaq Khan in 1993. When the time came, Benazir superceded the seniormost judge in the supreme court, justice Saad Saood Jan, and made Sajjad Ali Shah chief justice. But as things turned out, the Benazir government literally 'victimised' the chief justice and his family.
Then came the celebrated judge-ment of March 1996, in which he held that it was the prerogative of the chief justice to decide who should be appointed to the higher judiciary and that the government was bound by his advice. Benazir picked up a fight over this as Sharif hailed the judgement. Subsequently, when Benazir was dismissed by President Farooq Leghari, and the matter went before the supreme court, Sajjad threw the case in her face—to the delight of the then opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, who this time was the beneficiary. The latter returned to Islamabad as prime minister for the second time after the elections this February. And curiously picked up a fight with the chief justice on the issue of appointment of judges to the supreme court.
Now there is a possibility that Sajjad might once again make Leghari a powerful man by overturning the 13th amendment. This would give Leghari the authority to sack Sharif if he decides. It is not difficult to understand why a magazine called him "Judge Dread". Because strictness and stubbornness are traits that he is famous for. Some call him the 'clean' judge who did not even support his own brother in times of need.
Born in 1934 in Noabad, Lyari, in Sindh, Shah comes from the clan of Amirkhani Syeds, which is a branch of the Lakyari Syeds who are said to have been influential in the court of the invading rulers of Thana in the 17th and 18th centuries. One branch of the Amirkhanis settled at Malir, Karachi, while Sajjad's ancestors settled at Noabad, an old Sindhi and Kutchi fishing settlement in Lyari.
Sajjad did his bar-at-law from Lincoln's Inn in 1959 and a year later started practicing at the high court of Sindh and Balochistan. Sajjad probably appears to be a man in a hurry because he is to retire in February and is hell bent on playing all the cards against Nawaz Sharif while he can.
There are theories that he is not alone in this but is backed by several quarters in his present position. During the hearing of the contempt case he made remarks that had the government wincing. Earlier, while he started to take suo motu action against the government, he promised petitioners that they would not be disappointed.
Sajjad has given judicial activism a new twist. In a country where the judiciary has tended to be rather docile and has easily given in to pressures, especially from military dictators, some tend to refer to Sajjad's judicial activism as judicial terrorism.
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