Leila Seth (20 October 1930 – 5 May 2017) was an Indian judge who served as the first woman judge on the Delhi High Court and became the first woman to become Chief Justice of a state High Court, Himachal Pradesh High Court, on 5 August 1991. She was also the first woman to be designated as a senior counsel by the Supreme Court of India. She sat on a number of enquiry commissions, including one into the death of 'Biscuit Baron' Rajan Pillai, and was also a part of the three-member bench of the Justice Verma Committee that was established to overhaul India's rape laws in the aftermath of the infamous 2012 Delhi gang-rape case. She was a member of the 15th Law Commission of India from 1997 to 2000, and was responsible for the amendments to the Hindu Succession Act that gave equal rights to daughters in joint family property. Early life Leila Seth was born on 20 October 1930 in Lucknow, the first daughter after two sons in her family. She is said to have been very close to her father, who worked in the Imperial Railway Service and was devastated when he died when she was only 11 years old. After her father's death, the family struggled financially, but Leila's mother managed to educate her in Loreto Convent, Darjeeling. After finishing her schooling, she began to work as a stenographer in Kolkata. It was here that she was introduced to her husband Prem Seth, and had what she called a 'semi-arranged' marriage. After marriage, she moved to London with her husband who was working at Bata. Her move to London gave her the opportunity to start studying law. In an interview, she said that she picked law for the simple reason that it did not require attending classes, which was a priority since she had an infant at the time. In 1958, Leila Seth wrote the London Bar exam and topped it at the age of 27, becoming the first woman to do so. She joined the bar in 1959. In the same year she also cleared the civil services examination as an IAS officer. Upon topping the Bar in England, Seth was referred to as "Mother-in-Law" by a London newspaper, which carried a photograph of a young Leila Seth with her infant son, born only a few months before the exams. At the same time,