After completing his M.A and LL.B. from the University of Calcutta, Justice Kabir was admitted to the bar in 1973 and practiced civil and criminal law in Kolkata at the district court and the Calcutta High Court, Kolkata. He was made permanent judge of Calcutta High Court on 6 August 1990. Justice Kabir held the office of acting Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court on 11 January 2005. Justice Kabir has the credit for the computerization of the Calcutta High Court and the City Civil Court and other Courts in Kolkata. He was appointed as Executive Chairman of the National Legal Services Authority on 14 January 2010. Under his chairmanship a national plan of action was taken up to be executed by all State Legal Services Authorities and Calendar for activities was put in place and also legal services to Transgender people was taken up as a new project of NALSA. He became the Acting Chief Justice of the Jharkhand High Court on 3 January 2005, an elevation made permanent on 1 March 2005. He was elevated to the Supreme Court of India as Justice on 9 September 2005. On 29 September 2012 he became the 39th Chief Justice of India. After a tenure of a little over nine months as CJI, he retired on 18 July 2013. During his tenure as Chief Justice he was the Chancellor of the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, the Chairman of the General Council of the Gujarat National Law University and the Visitor of the National Law School of India University. He also taught as a Professor at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, where he used to teach a course on Law and the Child.
Judgements
During his tenure as a Supreme Court judge, Justice Kabir delivered several important judgements, particularly relating to human rights and election laws. One of the most important cases he presided over was that of Sandhya Manoj Wankhede of Amravati district in 2011. In this case the Supreme Court bench, composed of Justices Kabir and Cyriac Joseph, ruled that female relatives of a husband can also be booked under the Domestic Violence Act. Kabir also presided over the contempt case against prominent advocate and the Team Anna member Prashant Bhushan after he alleged that half out of the last 16 CJIs had been corrupt. On 8 May 2012, the Supreme Court bench composed of Altamas Kabir and Ranjana Desai ordered the government to end the Haj subsidy by 2022. On 19 October 2012, he granted bail to journalist Syed Mohammed Ahmed Kazmi, arrested for his alleged involvement in the Israeli embassy vehicle blast case in which an Israeli diplomat's wife was injured. Pronouncing the order, Justice Kabir said, "We are unable to appreciate the procedure adopted by the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, which has been endorsed by the High Court and we are of the view that the appellant acquired the right for grant of statutory bail on 17 July 2012, when his custody was held to be illegal by the additional sessions judge."
Controversies
In 2013, Justice Kabir, then serving as CJI, got embroiled in a controversy involving his lawyer sister Shukla Kabir Sinha and Gujarat High Court Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya. In a letter to the President, the Prime Minister and CJI Kabir, Justice Bhattacharya claimed that, as Chief Justice and head of the Supreme Court collegium, Justice Kabir had blocked his elevation to the Supreme Court. Justice Bhattacharya alleged that the reason was his opposition to the appointment of Shukla Kabir Sinha to the bench of the Calcutta High Court, while he was a member of that court's collegium in 2010. On 18 July 2013, in what was claimed to be a rushed judgement, a bench headed by Justice Kabir quashed the National Eligibility and Entrance Test for admissions to medical colleges in India. This judgement was later set aside by a constitution bench of the Supreme Court. In July 2013, the Supreme Court collegium had stalled Justice Kabir's move to appoint an SC judge just before his retirement, because a warrant of appointment designating Justice P Sathasivam as the next CJI had already been signed, and Justice Kabir's move would have been unprecedented and improper. In 2016, former Chief Minister and Arunachal Pradesh politician Kalikho Pul claimed that Justice Kabir Altamaas had passed wrong judgements regarding the public distribution system scam in the state, in sections 10.2 and 15.2 of his suicide note.
