Akhlaq Ur-Rahman Choudhury QC first Bangladesh-origin judge in UK High Court

British Queen Elizabeth II has appointed her Bangladesh-origin counsel Akhlaq Ur-Rahman Choudhury a judge to the High Court.

Syed Nahas Pasha London Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 18 August 2017, 06:26 PM
Updated : 18 August 2017, 06:26 PM

The appointment of Choudhury will be effective from Oct 2 with the elevation of Sir Gary Robert Hickinbottom to the Court of Appeal, the judiciary announced on Friday.

“Akhlaq Ur-Rahman Choudhury, aged 50, will be known as The Honourable Mr Justice Choudhury,” the announcement reads.

Justice Choudhury is the first British-Bangladeshi to be appointed to the High Court. He has been assigned to the Queen’s Bench Division.

Earlier in 2014, Bangladesh-born Khatun Sapnara was appointed as a Circuit Judge to hear cases in the Crown and Family Court.

Justice Choudhury joined the Bar in 1992 and took Silk in 2015. He is among the two Bangladesh-origin Queen’s Counsels. The other Bangladesh-origin Queen’s Counsel is Ajmalul Hossain.  

Justice Choudhury was appointed as a Recorder in 2009 and as a Deputy High Court Judge in 2016.

His practice developed rapidly and he is consistently ranked by his peers as a leader in his areas of expertise.

He was a long-standing member of the Attorney General’s A-panel of Approved Counsel in which capacity he acted for and advised the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the MoD, HMRC and various other government departments in relation to matters ranging from human rights and discrimination in the armed forces to the right to detain persons with mental incapacity.

He was retained as counsel for the Information Commissioner and has appeared in many of the ground-breaking cases in the developing area of Freedom of Information and Data Protection law.