Justice Bela M Trivedi Retires After Historic Tenure in Supreme Court

By: WE Staff | Monday, 19 May 2025

• Justice Bela M Trivedi retired after three-and-a-half years in the Supreme Court bench
• She was the 11th female judge to be elevated to the Supreme Court in 75 years of its existence

Supreme Court justice Bela M Trivedi, the eleventh woman to become a Supreme Court justice in the court's 75-year history, retired after three and a half years on the bench. Significantly, she started her career in the judiciary as a trial court judge in the state of Gujarat in July 1995 and became one of the few to have ascended from the lower courts to the highest court. During her career, she was a part of several landmark Supreme Court judgments.

As stated in her bio on the website of the Supreme Court, her appointment was followed by a peculiar episode in Indian judicial history—her father was a judge in the City Civil and Sessions Court concurrently, a feat acknowledged by the 1996 edition of the Limca Book of Records as "Father-daughter judges in the same court."

Justice Trivedi was promoted to the Supreme Court on August 31, 2021, as part of a record group of nine new judges, three of them women. On her last day, she sat on a ceremonial bench headed by Chief Justice B R Gavai, in keeping with the court's tradition for retiring judges.

Justice Bela M. Trivedi was the eleventh lady judge on the Supreme Court of India. Beginning her career as a trial court judge in Gujarat in 1995, she moved through the court system and was appointed to the top court in 2021. She was on the bench for three and a half years and was involved with many important judgments. Her extraordinary life also encompassed the unusual privilege of being a judge in the very same court where her father sat, a record recorded in the Limca Book of Records.