Her name was Leila Seth. She was born on October 20 1930 in Lucknow. She grew up during the partition years. She was married at 22 and followed her husband Prem to London while he completed his studies. She was 27 years old and pregnant when she decided to study law. She enrolled at the Inns of Court. In 1958 she topped the bar examination, finishing first among all candidates from England and Wales. A London newspaper ran her photograph with the headline referring to her as “Mother in Law.” She had given birth months before the exam. She was the first Indian woman to top the London Bar exam. She came back to India and built a legal career in Patna for ten years. In 1978 she became the first woman judge of the Delhi High Court. In 1991 she became Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court, the first woman to hold that position in any High Court in independent India. She served on the 15th Law Commission of India from 1997 to 2000. Her work during that period led directly to the Hindu Succession Amendment Act of 2005, which gave Hindu daughters equal rights to ancestral property for the first time in Indian law. After the Nirbhaya gang rape in December 2012 she was appointed to the Justice JS Verma Committee, which recommended the sweeping changes to sexual assault laws that followed. Her son is the novelist Vikram Seth. She died on May 5 2017. She was 86 years old. She had pledged to donate her organs and her family held no funeral. A prayer meeting was held in her honour instead. She topped the bar exam in England while pregnant. She became the first woman Chief Justice of an Indian High Court. She helped give daughters the right to inherit ancestral property. She helped rewrite India’s rape laws. Most Indians know her son’s book. Almost none know her story. Follow for stories India deserves to remember.