Justice Gita Mittal recently retired as Chief Justice of the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir after an extraordinary judicial career. She worked to make law and justice accessible and fairer. Justice Mittal has done substantial work to make our courts more victim-friendly. Justice Gita’s judgements always focused on how compassion must inform our lives and put her pens where the heart is, and compassion translates into judgments that make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. Justice Mittal’s commitment to institution-building and leadership on the administrative side has also been extremely inspiring. Her contribution to society has been recognized multiple times. The President of India conferred upon her with the Nari Shakti Puraskar 2017, the country’s highest civilian honour for women. She also received the P N Bhagwati Award (2019) at the Capital Foundation National Awards in recognition of her stellar judicial work towards access to justice and her innovation in designing the ‘Vulnerable Witness Deposition Complex’.