Former Supreme Court judge Justice M Fathima Beevi has passed away aged 96, OnManorama reported.
Justice Beevi was the first woman to be a judge of the Supreme Court of India. She was also the first Muslim woman to be appointed to the higher judiciary in the country.
She was born in Kerala in 1927 and her father encouraged her to study law. In 1950, she topped the Bar Council exam, becoming the first woman to receive a Bar Council gold medal.
She started her career as an advocate in Kerala and worked her way up to become a district and sessions judge in 1974. In 1980, she joined the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal and was appointed as a High Court judge in 1983.
She made history in 1989 by becoming the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court.
As a Supreme Court judge, she became the first Muslim woman in the higher judiciary and the first woman to become a Supreme Court Justice in an Asian country.
After retiring in 1993, she served as a member of the National Human Rights Commission and then as Governor of Tamil Nadu.
She resigned from the post of Governor of Tamil Nadu after rejecting the mercy petitions filed by four condemned prisoners in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.