Indira Jaising

Some Lesser Known Facts About Indira Jaising

• Indira Jaising is one of the most noted lawyers in India. She has actively participated in promoting human rights and raising several issues regarding women and gender equality.

• Indira Jaising spent her childhood in Mumbai and completed her schooling. Further, she pursued a bachelor’s degree in Arts from Bangalore University. After this, she went to the University of Bombay to get her post-graduate degree in LLM in the year 1962.

• After beginning her law practice, Indira Jaisingh started taking human rights-related cases. Soon, she became a well-known lawyer in India, fighting for human rights and gender equality in the country.

  

• She got married to Anand Grover, a senior lawyer who is known for his active participation in Indian law regarding homosexuality and HIV. In 1981, they together opened an NGO, Lawyers Collective, that focused on feminism and left-wing causes.

• Later, she went on to become the first woman to be designated as a senior advocate by the High Court of Bombay in the year 1986. During this time, she took up the most publicized and high-profile legal cases in India, and one of them was the Rupan Deol Bajaj vs KPS Gill case in the year 1988. KPS Gill was the Director-General of Police, Punjab at that time, and Rupan Deol Bajaj was an I.A.S. officer.

  

• This case was in the limelight for years and in the year 2005, the final decision in the case was given where KPS Gill was sentenced to pay a fine of Rs. 200,000 along with serving 3 years probation. She is also known for successfully challenging the Indian Divorce Act in the High Court of Kerala.

• In 2015, she argued for Priya Pillai in the Green Peace India case. In 2016, she represented herself in a case against the Supreme Court where she challenged the procedure of designating the senior advocates. ^[3]Bar and Bench

• Indira Jaising was the founder secretary of the Lawyers Collective, and she was also the founder of a monthly magazine titled “The Lawyers” in 1986 that covered the topics of social justice and women’s issues in the context of Indian law.

  

• The President of India gave her the Padma Shree to appreciate her work for the cause of public affairs in the year 2005.

• She argued for discrimination against women and fought Mary Roy’s case. The outcome was successful as the court agreed to grant inheritance rights to Syrian Christian women in Kerala. ^[4]The Wire

• She has been a part of several national and international conferences about women and related issues where she represented her country. However, in 2019, their NGO ‘Lawyers Collective’ had to face a problem when the Ministry of Home Affairs barred them from receiving foreign fundings, and their license was suspended as well on the basis of violating the foreign funding norms. ^[5]India Today

  

• Jaising has won several significant cases where she represented victims of sexual harassment against many powerful individuals, like the case against KPS Gill, DGP of Punjab.  In January 2020, she made headlines when she suggested Asha Devi, the mother of the 2012 Delhi Gang Rape victim, to forgive the rapists. Nirbhaya’s mother slammed Indira Jaising for giving such an absurd suggestion, especially when she was a senior lawyer fighting for women’s rights. ^[6] The Times of India

  

• In 2018, Indira Jaising was listed on the “World’s 50 greatest leaders” by Fortune magazine. ^[7]She The People