Vrinda Grover is an Indian lawyer, researcher and human rights activist who practises in the Supreme Court of India and the Delhi High Court. For more than thirty years she has represented victims of communal violence, custodial killings and sexual assault, and she helped draft the 2013 changes to India’s criminal law on sexual violence. Time magazine named her among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2013.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Vrinda Grover |
| Occupation | Lawyer, human rights activist |
| Courts | Supreme Court of India; Delhi High Court |
| Education | St. Stephen’s College, Delhi (history); University of Delhi (LL.B.); New York University (LL.M.) |
| Based in | New Delhi |
| Known for | Human rights litigation; 2013 criminal law reform |
| Recognition | Time 100 (2013) |
Early Life and Education
Grover studied history at St. Stephen’s College and law at the University of Delhi, and later took a master’s degree in law at New York University. She began practising in Delhi in 1989.
Legal Work
She has represented survivors and families in cases arising from the anti-Sikh violence of 1984, the Hashimpura killings of 1987, in which men detained by an armed police unit in Meerut were shot dead, and the violence in Kandhamal, Odisha, in 2008. In the Hashimpura case the Delhi High Court convicted sixteen former policemen in 2018, more than thirty years after the event. She appeared for the mother of Ishrat Jahan, a young woman killed by the Gujarat police in 2004 in what an investigation found to be a staged encounter.
She has acted in many cases of rape and sexual assault, including that of the tribal activist Soni Sori. After the Delhi gang rape of December 2012 she made submissions to the committee headed by Justice J. S. Verma and worked on the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act of 2013. She also contributed to the drafting of the law against child sexual abuse (2012) and to a proposed law on communal violence. She has argued against the death penalty, including in rape cases.
She has also represented journalists and fact-checkers facing criminal charges for their work.
International Role
In March 2024 the President of the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed her a member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine.
Research
Grover has been a research fellow and has written on the working of the criminal justice system, impunity for security forces and family law. She speaks regularly at universities and public forums.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Vrinda Grover known for?
Known for: Human rights litigation; 2013 criminal law reform.
Featured image: Vrinda Grover at the Jaipur Literature Festival, 2025. Photo by Sriya Sarkar, licensed under CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
