Retired Justice Hosbet Suresh dies at 91 in Mumbai

Eminent jurist and activist Justice (Retd) Hosbet Suresh passed away in Mumbai on Friday. Justice Suresh, a former judge of the Bombay High Court, was a champion of human rights and civil liberties. He was 91.

Justice Suresh was born on July 20, 1929, in Hosabettu in Surathkal in Karnataka.

He completed BA from Mangalore University and MA from Visvesvaraya Technological University in Belgaum. From Bombay University, he completed LLM.

Initially, he practised in the Bombay City Civil Court (BCCC) while he was a part-time professor at the Government Law College.
He then became a government pleader at the BCCC and later a judge there. He resigned from the BCCC and started practising in the Bombay High Court (BHC) where he was designated a senior advocate.

Later he was appointed as a judge in the Bombay High Court. He retired in 1991.

After retirement, apart from being a trustee of Lawyers Collective, he was very active on issues of abuse of human rights.

The cases he took up included investigating and reporting on eviction of slum dwellers, Gujarat riots of 2002, right to food and human rights abuses in Kashmir. "He will always be remembered as a strong advocate and defender of human rights and guide to all of us. We pay respects to him for his unstinting support for human rights," the Lawyers Collective said.