In India’s Supreme Court corridors, Menaka Guruswamy, forty-four, has a popularity for being a fearless fighter. As one of the attorneys who argued in opposition to Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, she turned into instrumental inside the regulation’s scrapping that made homosexuality a crime. Guruswamy had regarded on behalf of petitioners from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

A professional in Constitutional Law, Guruswamy has also been doggedly pursuing instances searching to rewrite many such colonial-technology legal guidelines. For example, she supports ongoing research into alleged fake encounters via the Indian Army and different protection employees in Manipur, wherein the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act or AFSPA, 1958, is in force. The AFSPA unearths its roots in an ordinance promulgated at some point of the Quit India motion.

“Unfortunately, some of the reforms to colonial legal guidelines should be made with the judiciary aid and no longer using the legislature,” says Guruswamy. “These laws were to keep humans as subjects and shouldn’t have any area in a democracy. There haven’t been many considerate, persistent reforms when you consider that Independence.”

Guruswamy has also been instrumental in protecting a provision in the Right to Education Act that mandated all private schools to confess deprived children and has fought to ensure a minimal constant tenure of three years in submitting civil servants.