Lawyer In Nirbhaya Case, Seema Kushwaha Joins BSP Ahead Of UP Polls

Supreme Court Advocate Seema Kushwaha who was the legal counsel in the 2012 Nirbhaya case has joined Bahujan Samaj Party on January 20.

Kushwaha belongs to Etawah district of Uttar Pradesh and gained popularity when she represented the woman who was raped and killed in 2012. The Nirbhaya case made headlines and also brought about law reforms in regards to crimes against women. All the four accused persons in the case were given the death penalty and were executed by hanging at Tihar jail on March 20, 2020.

The advocate was born on January 10, 1982 to Baladin Kushwaha and Ramkumari Kushwaha. Her father was reportedly the Gram Pradhan of Bidhipur gram Panchayat. She is the fourth daughter to her parents and has four other siblings.

She got her law degree from Kanpur University in 2005 and also went on to do Bachelor of Journalism in 2006 from the Uttar Pradesh Rajarshi Tandon Open University. Kushwaha later did her Masters in Political Science and started practicing at the Supreme Court of India in 2014. In 2012, when the Nirbhaya case took place, she was a law trainee demanding justice for the woman by participating in protests. She was officially made the lawyer in the case in 2014. Kushwaha demanded capital punishment for the accused persons in the case.

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She joined the Nirbhaya Jyoti Trust in 2014 as their legal advisor. It is a foundation founded by the parents of the deceased woman in the Nirbhaya case. The parents reportedly struggled to find a shelter and legal assistance so that founded a foundation to assist other women. Kushwaha also represented the woman who was raped and then cremated by the police in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh.

In the Uttar Pradesh Assembly Polls 2022, Congress, BJP, BSP, Samajwadi Party have all been releasing the names of their candidates recently. The leader of BSP and former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati announced earlier this month that she will not be contesting the assembly polls this year. This won't be the first time that she decided to sit out as she has never contested the assembly polls in the past.