Mohammad Hidayatullah

Mohammad Hidayatullah (17 December 1905 – 18 September 1992) was an Indian jurist and statesman who served as chief justice of India from 1968 to 1970, as acting president of India in 1969, and as vice president from 1979 to 1984. Educated at Cambridge and Lincoln's Inn, he was also a scholar of Urdu literature and wrote poetry himself. ^{1 2}

Hidayatullah was born in 1905 into the family of Khan Bahadur Hafiz Mohammed Wilayatullah, an Indian Civil Service officer and an Urdu poet of all-India repute; the English article's infobox gives his birthplace as Betul, in the Central Provinces and Berar. Educated at Raipur, at Morris College, Nagpur, and at Trinity College, Cambridge — where he took the second order of merit and a gold medal — he was called to the bar from Lincoln's Inn at twenty-five. He rose through the judiciary of the Central Provinces and the Supreme Court to become chief justice of India on 25 February 1968. ^{1 3}

When President Zakir Husain died in office in May 1969, and Vice President V. V. Giri resigned his acting presidency to contest the election, Hidayatullah, as chief justice, served as acting president of India from 20 July to 24 August 1969. He retired as chief justice in December 1970 and returned to high office as vice president of India from 1979 to 1984. He died at Bombay on 18 September 1992. No source read for this record names a religious school for him, and none is recorded. ^{1 4 2}

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