Meet Justice Indu Malhotra, retired Supreme Court judge, to head probe panel on PM Modi’s security breach

File Photo (IANS)

New Delhi: In the case of security breach during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Punjab, the Supreme Court on Wednesday (January 12) appointed a five-member committee that will be headed by former apex court judge Justice Indu Malhotra. 

The five-member panel which will probe the incident also includes Inspector General of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), Director General of Police of Chandigarh, the Registrar General of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and the Additional DGP (Security) of Punjab. 

Who is Indu Malhotra who will head the panel on PM’s security breach?

Justice Indu Malhotra created history after she became the first woman to be directly appointed to the Supreme Court from the Bar in April 2018. Malhotra is the 7th woman to become a judge of the Supreme Court since Independence, and the second woman to be designated as a Supreme Court Senior Advocate, as per Supreme Court Observer. The first woman to become a Supreme Court Senior Advocate was Leila Seth in 1977.

Justice Indu Malhotra served in the apex court for nearly three years from where she retired on March 13, 2021. 

Justice Malhotra's father Om Prakash Malhotra was a Senior Advocate in the Supreme Court as well as a distinguished author. 

Education

Indu Malhotra, who was born in Bangalore, completed her schooling in Delhi. She holds MA in Political Science from Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi University and LLB from Faculty of Law, University of Delhi. Before entering the legal profession, she taught at Miranda House College and Vivekananda College in Delhi. 

Tenure before Supreme court

Indu Malhotra joined the legal profession in 1983 and was appointed as a Senior Advocate in 2007. She qualified as an Advocate-on-Record in the Supreme Court in 1988 and bagged the first position in the examination. Malhotra, who specialises in arbitration law, was selected as an Arbitrator with the Indian Council of Arbitration. She has also served as a member of the High-Level Committee appointed to review the Institutionalisation of the Arbitration Mechanism in India.

Notable cases during SC tenure

Justice Indu Malhotra was a part of benches that dealt with a wide range of issues including entry of women to Kerala’s Sabarimala temple and the validity of Section 377 (same-sex relationship) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) among others.

In the Sabarimala temple entry case, Justice Malhotra penned the sole dissenting opinion by denying to lift restrictions for women between 10 to 50 years of age. She held that the right to equality under Article 14 does not override the fundamental right to religion under Article 25. 

Notably, in 2019, Justice Malhotra was on the 3-member committee probing the sexual harassment allegations against then Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi. The in-house committee “found no substance in the allegations contained in the Complaint dated 19.04.2019 of a former employee of the Supreme Court of India.”