The country’s 25th Chief Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed retires on Saturday after reaching the constitutionally mandated retirement age of 67.
Justice Zubayer Rahman Chowdhury of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court has already been appointed as the 26th Chief Justice.
Syed Refaat Ahmed took oath as Chief Justice on 11 August, 2024, following the July Mass Uprising.
A former student of Dhaka University, he earned his law degree with first-class honours from Wadham College at the University of Oxford in the UK, and later completed a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy and a PhD from the Fletcher School at Tufts University in the United States.
He also served with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as an immigration law expert.
Syed Refaat Ahmed was enrolled as a lawyer in the Dhaka District Court in 1984 and in the High Court Division in 1986, before being appointed an additional judge of the High Court on 27 April, 2003, and confirmed as a permanent judge two years later.
He is the son of Barrister Ishtiaq Ahmed, a former Attorney General and twice an adviser to the Caretaker Government, and Sufia Ahmed, the country’s first female National Professor and a language movement veteran who received the Ekushey Padak.
Soon after assuming office as Chief Justice, he announced a roadmap for judicial reforms and during his tenure took several milestone initiatives, including steps towards establishing a separate secretariat for the judiciary and framing specific laws for judicial appointments.
