Mirza Hameedullah Beg

Mirza Hameedullah Beg (1913 to 1988) was the fifteenth Chief Justice of India, serving from January 1977 to February 1978, and only the second Muslim to hold the office. Born in Lucknow to a family with its own judicial history, his father having been Chief Justice of Hyderabad State, he was educated at Cambridge University and the London School of Economics and called to the English bar in 1941. He served as a judge of the Allahabad High Court from 1963, as the first Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court from 1971, and as a judge of the Supreme Court of India from late 1971, and after retiring he chaired the Minorities Commission of India and received the Padma Vibhushan in 1988.