Justice Sajjad Sipra (who happens to have been my maternal uncle) passed away in Services Hospital Lahore on January 7th 2025 at the age of 88. I wanted to write a short note focused mostly on his public life, as a tribute and as a way to preserve some of his memories. His niece set up a website in his honor (https://sajjadsipra.com/ ) with several more personal memories and tributes, please do visit it to learn more about this extraordinary man.
Justice Sipra was the last and the greatest of the Sipra brothers, all of whom were unusual and exceptional characters. Their father, a Sipra Jat from the village of Dharekan Kalaan in district Gujrat (central punjab), was an officer in the Burma Police who joined as sub-inspector, but because of his intelligence and ability, was rapidly promoted and was serving as a Superintendent of Police (SP) in Rangoon when his children were born. Justice Sajjad Sipra was born May 10th 1936 (the second of 5 brothers and 4 sisters) and grew up in Burma until 1941, when the Japanese invasion forced them to flee. The family returned to their ancestral village while my grandfather marched with the retreating British troops on the famous “road to Mandalay”. The family had no contact with him for months and were afraid he might have died until he turned up in the village several months later. The family then lived in Shimla for the duration of the war. This life of anglicized luxury was cut short by partition, after which the family lived in the village for many months before becoming members of the new emerging middle class in Pakistan.
Sajjad Sipra attended Gordon College Rawalpindi, then did his law degree from Punjab University. While there he got into student politics and with his dominant personality and with four brothers available to back him up, he became a star in student politics. He was elected president of the PU students union, but then led a protest against the university ordnance that led to the university being shut down and got thrown out and had to complete his degree from Peshawar university.
This extremely varied life, moving between being big sahib’s kids in Rangoon and Shimla to a village without electricity or roads and then back to middle class city life in the new state combined with his own personality and intelligence to give him a very deep and wide perspective on the world. He was comfortable in all these worlds and had friends in all of them. He became a successful lawyer and a patron of many good causes in Lahore and in his village. After a brief flirtation with rural electoral politics (as a supporter of Bhutto’s PPP) his life took another direction when he was appointed deputy attorney general and then as judge of the Lahore High court. After a stellar career in the high court he was appointed the Ombudsman Punjab in 2000 and served two terms.
I can say without fear of contradiction that he was the most activist and effective ombudsman in the history of this office. The job suited his ideals and his skills perfectly. The combination of his wisdom and wide learning, a lifelong concern for the underdog, a vast network of friends and mentees, and his dominating personality and an ability to intimidate lesser mortals, all these combined to make him a scarily effective ombudsman. Countless poor people got relief from various public institutions because Justice Sajjad Sipra was willing and able to call any officer to his courtroom and bully him into doing the right thing. Again, I feel very comfortable making such assertions because anyone can go to Lahore and find MANY people willing to go on the record to confirm all these claims.
After his retirement he continued to look after an army of relatives and poor people who had crossed paths with him at some point. He was also on the board of many organizations and charities and as usual, he took his responsibilities seriously and was able to get things done. The Nawaz Sharif Women’s college in inner Lahore, the SOS villages, and many other institutions got his help and expressed their thanks, publicly and repeatedly.
Judges of the higher judiciary are well paid in Pakistan and have a very generous retirement package, but in spite of having been a very successful lawyer and the owner of some land and other properties, at the time of his death he was living in a small rented flat and had no other property left anywhere because he was “a river to his people”. The number of people he helped financially, helped to get jobs, helped to survive administrative high-handedness, etc is in the thousands, and hundreds of those people came to pay their respects at his funeral and thousands will remember him for many years to come. As Confucius said “to be remembered after one has died, THAT is longevity”. Sajjad Sipra will not be easily forgotten.
These are the Sipra brothers in all their glory. The eldest, Riaz Sipra joined the Pakistan Police service and was the archetypal “tough officer”, someone who was always being posted where there was trouble (or where unusual ability was needed, as in arranging the logistics of the extremely complicated Islamic summit in Lahore in 1973, with heads of state staying in private residences all over town and the police had to coordinate their arrival in exact sequence at the exact time for every event.. this was Riaz Sipra’s job). Sajjad was next. Then came Imtiaz Sipra, a sportsman and sports writer who won countless athletic trophies and later became a very respected sports journalist, the sports editor of the Daily News and was awarded the Pride of Performance by the govt of Pakistan. The brilliant Iftikhar Sipra was a bit of a recluse, while the youngest Ayaz Sipra was another outstanding sportsman who joined the army and won the CinCs cane (the short course equivalent of the sword of honor) at PMA and was set for an outstanding military career when he got mixed up in the Attock conspiracy case. All have passed away now, but they will be long remembered in Lahore and wherever their friends and family are located. RIP.
