MS. GEETA LUTHRA
(Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India)
Geeta Luthra’s life and career are studded with milestones of success. She was the head girl of her convent school, won the principal’s medal as a BA political science student at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, went on to study at Law Faculty of Delhi University, and eventually won the Inlaks scholarship to Cambridge. She completed her LLM and M.Phil at Cambridge, and returned to India to set up her legal practice. Luthra was also the sports captain while at LSR, only to be succeeded by Geeta Mittal, the first woman chief justice of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court. Her love and aptitude for hockey was so outstanding that Luthra even played for the Delhi state team.
Apart from Akbar and Tejpal, Luthra also represented Shashi Shekhar Thakur in the Delhi High Court in 2016 — a man, who along with his brother, was accused by their niece of rape and sexual abuse spanning more than a decade. In the cases of Akbar and Tejpal, Luthra is working alongside lawyers from Karanjawala & Co, the legal firm whose managing partner is known to be the lawyer on call for India’s rich and famous, especially in cases of sexual harassment. For Luthra, however, her part in these cases is a matter of coincidence, and she says that “she has not chosen it so”. She is cognizant of the fact that she is a woman defending alleged sexual harassers, but Luthra believes that she is merely doing her duty by the law.
To form her guiding principles that overcome this seeming moral dissonance, she turns to John Stuart Mill, whom she considers to be one of history’s greatest philosophers. Referring to his theory, she said, “Truth is a prism, and it has many facets. The facet of the one person who is different from 99 others may actually be correct.”
“Look at the dissenting judgments in Aadhaar or the Sabarimala case, for example. Just because only one judge disagrees, does not make them wrong,” she said.
“Certain truths, however, are inalienable. Like the right of a person accused to a fair and free trial – he is innocent until proven guilty,” Luthra said.