Manjula Chellur (File Pic)
Mumbai/Nagpur: Manjula Chellur formerly Chief Justice of West Bengal at Calcutta High Court has taken over as Chief Justice of Mumbai High court in a small ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhawan in Mumbai where she took oath.
Manjula has many firsts to her credit.
Manjula Chellur ,born 5 December 1955, is the first woman Chief Justice ofCalcutta High Court, was the Cheif Justice of Kerala High Court and the first female judge of the Karnataka High Court.
Chellur was born and educated in Karnataka. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Allum Sunmangalamma Women’s College, Bellary, and went on to earn her law degree from Renukacharya Law College, Bangalore. In 1977 the Supreme Court of India sponsored her on a Gender & Law fellowship to England’sUniversity of Warwick. In 2013 Chellur received an honorary doctorate fromKarnataka State Women’s University.
Manjula began her law practise in her home town of Bellary practising both civil and criminal law.
Chellur became the first female advocate to practice law in Bellary. She worked as a legal advisor, practising both civil and criminal law before the local Bellary courts. In 1988 she was appointed as District and Sessions Judge; she served as the Principal and Sessions Judge for Kolar and Mysore. In addition to these positions she was also the Chief Judge of Court of Small Causes, and Principal Judge of the Family Court at Bangalore. On 21 February 2000 she was named judge of Karnataka High Court.
On 9 November 2011 she was appointed Acting Chief Justice of the Kerala High Court. She was part of many land mark decisions when in Kerala .In 2013 the Division Bench of the Kerala High Court, consisting of Chief Justice Chellur and Justice Vinod Chandran, ordered the state government to submit a statement regarding the high-profile rape case against the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, P. J. Kurien. Also in March 2013, the justices refused the plea of prominent Marxist politician and Leader of the Opposition V. S. Achuthanandan for an early hearing in another investigation into the “Ice Cream Parlour sabotage case”, involving an ice cream parlour that was allegedly being used as a front to lure girls and women into prostitution in the 1990s In August 2014, she took over as Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court.
