Radhika Chitkara

July 2022: Criminal Law-III (criminal procedure)
November 2022: Criminal Law-I (substantive criminal law)

Education

• B.A., LL.B. (Hons.), NLSIU- 2013
• LL.M. (Concentration in International Human Rights Law), Harvard Law School- 2017
• PhD., NLSIU (ongoing)

Profile

Since graduating from NLSIU almost a decade ago, my work has been embedded within the civil liberties, women’s, and land rights movements in northern and eastern India. As a legal researcher and human rights practitioner, I have undertaken primary and doctrinal research, investigations into rights violations, documentation, advocacy, direct legal representation, legal literacy, and other diverse interventions, individually and as part of civil society collectives and NGOs.

My research interests include issues of criminal justice, civil liberties, human rights, and feminist legal theories. I am currently pursuing my PhD on “Special Procedures under Anti-Terror Laws and the Right to Fair Trial: An Empirical and Doctrinal Study of Investigations and Prosecutions under the UAPA” from NLSIU.

I have taught courses relating to constitutional law (rights), legal methods, substantive and adjectival criminal law, and feminist legal theories and praxis, at the National Law University-Delhi, Jindal Global Law School, and NLSIU. As a law teacher, I bring clinical pedagogies to the classroom in both core and elective courses, in formats beyond that of the traditional law clinic. These clinical pedagogies are praxis-oriented, introducing students to diverse methodologies of the Law outside courtrooms, while also locating the practise of Law in its socio-political context.

Research Interests

• Criminal justice, human rights, constitutionalism, clinical legal education, feminist legal theories

Publications

• Radhika Chitkara, Revisiting Kartar Singh v. State of Punjab: Fair Trial and the Scope of Exception in Anti-Terror Laws, 13(1) Jindal Global Law Review (Spl. Issue on Justice in Times of Catastrophe) 103-116 (2022).
• Radhika Chitkara, Indigenous Peoples Right to Land in India and Europe, in Dimensions of Constitutional Democracy: India and Germany 183-206 (A. Roy and M. Becker eds., Springer: 2020).
• Radhika Chitkara and Khushboo Pareek, The Right to Land: A Study in the Legality of Forced Evictions, 2 NLUD Journal of Legal Studies 69-88 (2020).
• Radhika Chitkara and Astha Saxena, LAW RELATING TO ADIVASI LAND AND RESOURCE RIGHTS IN INDIA, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) (2019).
• Radhika Chitkara, Pulling the Wool: The Indirect Reform of Religious Family Laws in India, 6 Intl. J. Juris. Fam. 43 (2015).
• Radhika Chitkara, Between Choice and Security: Irretrievable Breakdown of Marriage in India, 21(3) Juris. 847 (2014).