Senior advocate Geeta Luthra, who did her LLM and M.Phil at Cambridge, says everyone deserves a chance at a fair trial.
New Delhi: Former union minister M.J. Akbar has fielded a woman advocate, not a team of 97 lawyers as reported in a section of the media, to fight his defamation case against journalist Priya Ramani.
Akbar, who has been accused of sexual harassment by at least 20 women, including Ramani, resigned as minister of state for external affairs Thursday.
Also read: 10 lawyers appear for MJ Akbar as hearing in defamation case against Ramani starts
While the Twitterati, and some media organisations, had reported – although incorrectly – that Akbar would be represented by a team of 97 lawyers, in the end it is senior advocate Geeta Luthra’s presence in court as his representative that could help him fight the battle of perception in the court of public opinion.
While Akbar may be facing his first real-life crisis in a long-long time, for Luthra, defending men accused of sexual harassment and even rape is not new. Her current list of high-profile cases includes Tehelka founder-editor Tarun Tejpal.
Luthra believes it is her duty as a trained lawyer to provide counsel for anybody who needs it, irrespective of the case at hand. “Everyone deserves a chance at a fair trial,” she told ThePrint.
“It is not my place to say what is right and what is wrong, I have always strived to work for a true sense of fairness. That is what makes me tick,” she added.
Who is Geeta Luthra?
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.
As a lawyer, this isn’t the first time that Luthra has found herself representing a public figure accused of sexual harassment. 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.
On the limits of #MeToo
The #MeToo movement is a subject Luthra approaches with a note of caution.
“The USP of this movement is that you’re’ getting the world to pay attention to an important fact, but because some of these testimonies are so delayed, the line between what is genuine and not genuine becomes blurry,” she said.
Also read: MJ Akbar: The brilliant editor who’s now seen as India’s most high-profile sexual predator
In her arguments at Patiala House Court Thursday, she used the exact same reasoning to argue against the credibility of Priya Ramani’s tweets and articles. This line of reasoning — that delays in filing complaints suggests inauthenticity — was deployed during her defence of Tarun Tejpal as well as during Thakur’s bail plea in the Delhi HC.
“Our sexual harassment in the workplace law is reasonable and well-defined, but there needs to be a timeline on the filing of the complaint, because even the person who is being blamed has the right to a defence,” she said.
Her arguments in court reflect the expectations inherent in Luthra’s job – to win cases, defend her clients, and abide by the rules of her profession.
“I have always maintained that social media trials are wrong. We can’t pre-convict a person — public perception may not always be in tandem with what is actually right,” Luthra said.
“We must have a fair system, for both the accused and the accuser, to get justice,” she added.
Family of lawyers
Geeta Luthra belongs to a family of eminent lawyers — her brother Siddharth Luthra is also a renowned senior advocate in the Supreme Court, and the Luthra siblings are the children of late K.K. Luthra, who was himself a celebrity senior advocate in his time.
Her path to the legal world was laid by her father’s legacy, whom she considers her biggest motivations behind joining the profession.
Incidentally, Siddharth Luthra represented Supreme Court judge Swatanter Kumar in a criminal defamation case against media houses related to a sexual harassment case. He also defended Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) director-general R.K. Pachauri, when he was facing sexual harassment allegations from a woman employee in 2015.
However, despite a journey studded with academic success at every stage, earning a reputation as a respected lawyer hasn’t always been easy.
“I remember 2-3 years ago, when I was presenting a case about immunity within a sovereign state, an embassy, and the judge said rather disparagingly, ‘You perhaps don’t know what Lauterpacht (a Polish-British lawyer) said’.”
“I replied by saying, ‘Well sir, I was taught by him’,” Luthra told ThePrint, recalling her time at Cambridge.
The senior advocate, who has been practising for over three decades, says that women have to work tremendously hard to be taken seriously in the profession. “If you’re a man and aggressive, then you’re assertive, but as a woman you’re either shrill or aggressive,” she said.
Also read: Tarun Tejpal’s gaming of legal system shows why #MeToo doesn’t believe in due process
Luthra notes that there are still very few women in positions of power within the judicial system, both as judges or as lawyers. She credits Indu Malhotra, Indira Jaising and her friend Pinky Anand for breaking the glass ceiling, but believes that “we still have a way to go”.
Even her specialisation in family matters, with a focus on matrimonial issues, was not so much about an empowered choice, as it was a process of elimination.
“The direction that my career took wasn’t entirely a choice. Women at the time were expected to practise within conventional and limited spheres,” she said.
Luthra has made it a point to take a large number of pro bono cases, and has also worked closely as legal aid lawyer for female prison inmates in Bihar in the past.
Ms Luthra should be using her legal prowess for fighting some meaningful cases unless the fat legal fees paycheck they get is the main reason for such celebrity lawyers..Just like “No one killed Jessica” she wants to prove “MJ is a saint.Shameful
MJ AKBAR needs to be put in jail if even allegation comes true. This is not about Congress BJP or any other political parties it is about the male arrogance of perpetrators like MJ Akbar.
As a woman, I’m not sure I applaud her effort or renounce it. It’s a case study in itself! She’s doing her job. But within those parameters are questions about what you stand for and reject those you consider unworthy of support. Lawyers are also humans too, and hopefully with a conscience.
To say that a complaint should be lodged within a reasonable time is to miss the whole foundation of the Me Too movement. It is a cry for justice from – practically – decades, if not generations, of women against whom the decks were stacked. Ms Smita Prakash said on a TV show that if these women had spoken up twenty, thirty years ago, no one would have supported them. I remember a senior male journalist saying on TV during the Tarun Tejpal case that if what he had done to his junior lady colleague was treated as rape, half the editors would be in jail. Times are changing, standards of conduct are being raised. If the passage of time, which blurs memory, makes facts more difficult to prove is to be the line of defence in this case, each of these twenty women should take a polygraph test and tender it to the Court, along with their affidavits. So should Mr Akbar.