Menaka Guruswamy

Indian Supreme Court lawyers Arundhati Katju and Menaka Guruswamy, both also NLSIU Bangalore graduates, have been selected for the prestigious US-based TIME magazine’s list of 100 most influential people of 2019, cited in particular for their work in overturning section 377.

The Supreme Court has elevated 38 lawyers to senior counsel status, a list that unusually also includes some bright up-and-comers and also several graduates of NLSIU Bangalore, which has become a semi-regular fixture in the senior counsel stakes.*

"We have a constitutional, political, legal and social amnesia about the horrors that accompanied our founding," argued Supreme Court lawyer and Yale Law School visiting faculty Menaka Guruswamy persuasively in Scroll, about the death and bloodshed of the India Pakistan partition of 1947 that saw millions displaced and between 0.5 million and 2 million dead, according to various estimates.

In the ongoing Extra Judicial Execution of Victim Families Association vs Union of India, being heard by justices Madan B Lokur and UU Lalit, the Attorney General had alleged that an article published in The People’s Chronicle (English) and Poknapham (Manipuri) carried certain “highly objectionable statements” by Babloo Loitongbam, who has been reporting the case.

In the Extra-Judicial Execution of Victim Families Association vs Union of India, which came up before the bench of justices Madan B Lokur and UU Lalit at Court 9 on Monday at 2.30 p.m., the amicus curiae, Menaka Guruswamy, proposed the setting up of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the six fake encounters involving seven victims in Manipur, as a result of action by the security forces.

The fake encounter case involving the use of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) against innocent victims - being heard by the Supreme Court suo motu - came up before justices Madan B Lokur and UU Lalit.