Arundhati Katju

Katju was born in Allahabad, India to Vivek and Geeta Katju. She completed her senior schooling from Air Force Bal Bharati School in New Delhi in 2000.

Katju obtained a B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) degree from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore (2005). After practising at the Indian bar for 11 years, she enrolled in the LL.M. program (2017) at Columbia University, New York where she was a Human Rights Fellow, James Kent Scholar, and Public Interest Honoree.[1] Her doctoral research at Columbia University, as a Finkelstein Fellow, considers issues of criminal and constitutional law in India.

In the year 2019, in an interview with CNN Fareed Zakaria, Katju revealed that she was in a relationship with lawyer Menaka Guruswamy, with whom she convinced the Supreme Court in 2018 to decriminalise Section 377. She said that the two were indeed a couple and that the victory was not just a professional benchmark but also a personal win.[2]

Katju enrolled in the Indian bar in 2005 and joined the chambers of Senior Advocate Sidharth Luthra where she practised as a criminal defence lawyer for five years. As a white-collar defence lawyer, she defended clients in the 2G spectrum bribery case and the Jessica Lal murder case, and represented investigative journalists in the Cash for Questions exposé.

Katju started her own law chambers in 2011 in New Delhi. Her practice at the Supreme Court and Delhi High Court covers areas of criminal, civil and constitutional law, as well as arbitration.

In 2016, Katju drafted the lead petition[3] in Navtej Singh Johar and Others v. Union of India, the case that led the Indian Supreme Court to strike down Section 377, the Indian sodomy law.[4] She has also litigated other significant LGBT rights cases in India, including Suresh Kumar Koushal v Naz Foundation (where the Indian Supreme Court upheld the sodomy law, 2013) and Shivani Bhat v GNCT of Delhi (2015).[5]

She has also represented India’s leading public university, Jawaharlal Nehru University (2013-2016) before different forums, and also been a prosecutor for the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (2008-2009).

Alongside her commercial practice, Katju represented nearly 100 indigent clients in criminal appeals for the Delhi High Court Legal Services Committee for three years. The Delhi High Court has appointed her Amicus Curiae in criminal matters on numerous occasions.

Katju was admitted to practice law in New York in 2018.

Katju researched issues of Indian criminal and constitutional law at the Centre for Study of Law and Culture, Columbia Law School (2017).  She has also taught white-collar defence at the National Law University, Delhi.

Katju worked with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, India (2010) to devise special procedures for criminal trials in cases of sexual offences against children. The Commission’s proposed Bill was considered while drafting the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.

In 2016, Katju was awarded the prestigious Human Rights Fellowship by Columbia University, New York[13] and the Women’s International Leadership Program Fellowship at International House, New York. She was also awarded Columbia Law School’s Herman N. Finkelstein Memorial Fellowship (2018-19). In 2018, she was a US-Italy Young Leaders Fellow. Katju was a TEDx Speaker at TEDxFerhadija’19[14] where she spoke about how ‘Stories can change the law’.[15] In April 2019, her name featured in Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People, along with other prominent personalities such as Menaka Guruswamy, Xi Jinping, Nancy Pelosi and Hasan Minaj.[16]

In June 2019, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, an event widely considered a watershed moment in the modern LGBTQ rights movement, Queerty named her one of the Pride50 "trailblazing individuals who actively ensure society remains moving towards equality, acceptance and dignity for all queer people".[17]