Jay Mala

Jay Mala is an Indian politician, advocate and social activist. She is a co-founder of the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party, prior to which she was President of the Indian Student Congress. She is a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India, who in a 1985 landmark case sued the State of Jammu and Kashmir changing tort law in India.

She was born to a Goud Saraswat Brahmin family.

Jay Mala as the President of Indian Student Congress in 1979 led thousands of university students in protest against the Janata Party government at India Gate, New Delhi. Then minister of external affairs and future prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee attempted to address the angry crowd but was pelted with stones. While bleeding from the head he was protected by Jay Mala, who to led him to escape into the neighbouring Parliament building. In the aftermath of the protests Vajpayee personally secured the release of Jay Mala from Parliament Street Police Station.

In 1982 she won a case against the Government of Jammu and Kashmir in the Supreme Court. Jay Mala, acting as a legal aid advocate, secured the release of Riaz Ahmed, proving he was still a minor when he was falsely imprisoned in Jammu and Kashmir. Chief justice P. N. Bhagwati quashed the detention stating the prisoner was a school boy protesting for student rights and not as the police had falsely accused him of being an adult threatening grievous bodily harm armed with a knife.

The case set precedent in India for determining the age of a minor detainee. The judges established that a two years margin of error be applied in judicial proceedings to radiological and orthopaedic test results used to determine age in favor of the accused. The case has been continuously quoted for three decades to secure the release of minors across India, and influenced legislation of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2000.

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