Khosa will serve until Dec. 21 this year, after which he will step down ISLAMABAD: Asif Saeed Khosa was sworn in as chief justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Friday, in a ceremony led by the country’s president, Dr. Arif Alvi. Khosa took the oath of office, pledging to do “right by all people, according to law, without fear or favor,” before an audience that included the prime minister, Imran Khan, and the chief of the armed forces, Qamar Javed Bajwa. Khosa is known as an experienced and respected judge, having presided over 55,000 cases in a career spanning over two decades. He has previously promised that he would do his best, as chief justice, to reduce delays in cases at all levels of the judicial hierarchy, saying: “No stone shall be left unturned in attending to such issues, and improving the situation.” Mohammed Habib Ullah Khan, a senior lawyer based in Islamabad, said: “The legal fraternity expects him to clear a backlog of around 1.9 million pending cases.” He added that, unlike his predecessor, who cultivated a reputation for judicial activism, Khosa was expected to be more politically reserved. Khosa will serve until Dec. 21 this year, after which he will step down. When asked about the man he was replacing, retiring Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, and his crusade to build dams in Pakistan, Khosa was blunt. “I would also like to build dams: A dam against unnecessary delays in cases, a dam against frivolous litigation, and a dam against fake witnesses and false testimonies. I would also like to retire; retire our debt of pending cases,” he said. Khosa is known for his literary references, and famously quoted Mario Puzo’s 1969 mafia novel “The Godfather” when giving a verdict in a Panama Papers-related case in 2017, saying: “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” He has been involved in several other notable cases in recent years, heading the bench that upheld the death sentence handed to Malik Mumtaz Qadri in 2015. Qadri, a former bodyguard, murdered his employer, the then-governor of Punjab. Salman Taseer, in 2011 for supporting Asia Bibi, a woman convicted of blasphemy. He was also a judge in the appeal case that acquitted Bibi in 2018 after she spent eight years on death row, an outcome that garnered international attention.