Kalpana Rawal

Kalpana Rawal, born January 15, 1946, in Bhuj, India, is a Kenyan lawyer and judge who served as Deputy Chief Justice and Vice President of the Supreme Court of Kenya from June 2013 to June 2016. She practiced law in India for three years, having studied under P. N. Bhagwati, who later became Chief Justice of India, before building a legal career in Kenya spanning more than forty years that included service as a judge of the High Court of Kenya and as Kenya liaison judge from April 2010. As Vice President of the Supreme Court she worked to reduce case backlogs across the civil, criminal, family, environmental, and land law divisions, led the judicial inquiry into the 2012 helicopter crash that killed Kenyan minister George Saitoti, and received the Elder of the Order of the Burning Spear honor from President Uhuru Kenyatta before her retirement in 2016 amid a legal dispute over the judiciary mandatory retirement age.