Overview
- Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan died in Chandigarh on Sunday and was cremated there the following day, with colleagues and family attending his last rites.
- He began legal practice in 1964, was elevated to the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 1987, and served as Chief Justice of the Madras and Andhra Pradesh high courts in the late 1990s.
- The Union Government appointed him on December 16, 1992 to lead a one-man inquiry into the Babri Masjid demolition, a commission that ran nearly 17 years and submitted its report in 2009.
- The 1,029-page Liberhan report concluded the demolition was premeditated and involved organized actors, a finding that made the commission a key document in debates over responsibility for the 1992 violence.
- Colleagues remembered Liberhan as a quiet, courteous jurist who mentored younger lawyers and left a lasting imprint on India’s legal institutions through both his judgments and the long-running inquiry.