Malavika Rajkotia

Rajkotia was schooled at Welham Girls' School in Dehradun. After completing Political Science Hons. from Lady Shri Ram College New Delhi, she pursued her LLB from Campus Law Centre,[4] New Delhi.

Malavika Rajkotia was a part of the dramatics society of her college and she became an amateur theater actor before pursuing law.[5] She worked with Sheila Bhatia of Delhi Art Theater and was taught by Sheila Bhatia. She was part of the Hindi Theater.[5] She has been active in theatre and over the years has worked in about thirty Hindi and English productions. She decided pursue law and went on to become one of India's leading divorce attorneys.

Rajkotia has drawn upon her own notes and a large number of case studies, to produce a book that examines the institution of marriage in India, gender equality (within a marriage and inside our courts), property and family laws and the legal profession.[6] She writes about the reasons she came across for people getting divorced and concluded that one of the primary reasons was the enforcement of gender roles. She says men had a problem when their wives expressed agency, and the resulting disagreement often led to divorce.[7] She has admitted that the book is from a woman's perspective, and said that the way we treat both genders is uneven.[8] Rajkotia has also handled celebrity cases and claimed that even though the voyeuristic interest in celebrity cases is higher, the proceedings are no different than a normal case.[9] She represented Omar Abdullah in the event of his divorce.[10]

She has worked with issues relating to Civil Liberties and Environmental Law with various NGOs like Sakshi and IFSHA on gender rights, Civil Liberties and Human Rights issues.She has lectured at NLUD, served and spoken as resource person at the Judicial academy Ranchi and Delhi on family law and gender sensitization of judges.

In one of the cases, the Judge remarked it was because of divorce lawyers the cases were prolonged, and not because of the complexities of those cases. Rajkotia was going to write an open letter to high court, but ultimately didn't and the letter made it to her book instead, She details the complications of Divorce cases and the loopholes such as the Section 498A in the Indian Divorce Law.[11]

Rajkotia was born to a Sikh Family in Karnal and she lives in Delhi with her son and daughter. She was also the anchor on Shakti, the first television talk show in India which focused on women’s rights and acted in two episodes of a television law-based serial called “Bhanwar”.[12]  

Rajkotia, Malavika. ‘Intimacy Undone: Law of Marriage, Divorce and Family in India’. Speaking Tiger Books, 2017.[13] Rajkotia has also written a number of articles for leading Publications such as The Week, India Today and the Hindustan Times:

• Let the law prevail, not doubts (The Week) [14]
• The case against abolitionists (The Indian Express) [15]
• Why Modi Govt's Triple Talaq is divorced from reality faced by Muslim Women (India Today) [16]
• Thinking Privacy in Family Law [17]
• The Law and The Mob [18]
• The Law Commission’s Questionnaire on Uniform Civil Code [19]
• Should we Sign the Hague Convention? [20]
• The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All The Lawyers [21]
• With both genders wanting to break away from the stereotype, this results in increasing stress [22]