Dipak Misra was born on 3 October 1953 and is an Indian jurist who served as the 45th Chief Justice of India from 28 August 2017 till 2 October 2018.
14 Facts About Dipak Misra
2.
Dipak Misra is former Chief Justice of the Patna High Court and Delhi High Court.
3.
Dipak Misra is the nephew of Justice Ranganath Misra, who was the 21st Chief Justice from 1990 to 1991.
4.
Dipak Misra was first appointed an Additional Judge of the Orissa High Court in 1996.
5.
Dipak Misra was elevated to the Supreme Court on 10 October 2011.
6.
Dipak Misra had a tenure of thirteen months as chief justice at the Supreme Court after being appointed the 45th Chief Justice of India on 28 August 2017 until mandatory retirement at 65 years of age, on 2 October 2018 and was succeeded by Ranjan Gogoi.
7.
In Subramanian Swamy v Union of India, a two judge bench of the Supreme Court of India, which included Misra and Justice Prafulla C Pant, has upheld that defamation is a criminal offense.
8.
In Shakti Vahini v Union of India, deprecating honour killing and honour crimes, Justice Misra wrote that honour killing guillotines individual liberty and freedom of choice and that assertion of choice is an insegregable facet of liberty and dignity.
9.
Dipak Misra stated that it has to be curbed with an iron hand and that no citizen can be allowed to take the law into his own hands or become law unto himself and further issued a slew of directions, including preventive, punitive and remedial measures, to deal with the crime.
10.
Dipak Misra had upheld the constitutionality of the criminal defamation as a reasonable restriction on free speech under Article 19 of the Constitution stating that reputation cannot be allowed to be sullied on the anvil of free speech which is not absolute.
11.
Dipak Misra was part of the bench that ordered playing of the National Anthem in the beginning of a film in theatres as mandatory, which requires the audience to stand up when it is played.
12.
Dipak Misra was part of the bench that ruled out Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code dealing with adultery.
13.
On 27 September 2018, Dipak Misra read the judgment that adultery will no longer be a criminal offence, but can serve as a reason for other civil issues, such as divorce.
14.
Dipak Misra is hailed as a 'warrior of gender equality' as he led various constitutional benches which passed historic judgements that upheld equal rights for women and the LGBT community, like the scrapping of Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, legalising homosexuality by partially striking down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code and allowing entry for women of menstruating age group into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala.