Mihir Desai

Mihir Desai
Nationality	Indian
Occupation	Lawyer
Known for	Human rights activism

Mihir Desai is a human rights lawyer in cases of mass murders & riots, fake encounter & custodial deaths by the police, police brutality, freedom of speech & journalists, political activists & prisoners of conscience, excesses by the state, mass disappearances & deaths and genocide probes. A senior counsel, he has been practicing criminal matters in the High Court of Mumbai and the Supreme Court of India.

Desai is the son of Neera Desai, (1925-2009), a leading advocate of Women's rights from a middle-class Gujarati family. As a child he traveled with his mother to Rome and to the United States, where she had a one-year teaching assignment. His uncle ran a firm of solicitors. Desai is a co-founder of the Indian People's Tribunal (IPT) and the Human Rights Law Network, and is a former Director of the India Center for Human Rights and Law. He was co-founder with lawyer Colin Gonsalves of the human rights magazine Combat Law. Desai addresses subjects that include illegal acts by the authorities, police brutality and sexual assault. He has assisted survivors of the 2002 Gujarat massacre. He was co-editor of the book Women and Law (1999). He is an invited member of the India Regional Team of the "Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme".

In 2003 Desai was assisting the Asian Human Rights Commission in their fight on behalf of Adivasi people to remain on land claimed by the Maharashtra State Farming Corporation. Desai was co-convenor with Angana P. Chatterji of an IPT team that investigated communal violence in Orissa over a 20-month period in 2005/2006 and co-editor of the report that presented the findings. Desai was legal counsel to the International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir, and co-signatory to a February 2009 letter to Omar Abdullah, Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, that requested action to address the abuses the tribunal had found.

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