The morning after the fateful night of 16th December 2012, newspaper headlines screamed about a 23-year-old female physiotherapy student getting gang-raped and brutalised by six men in a moving bus in South Delhi the previous evening. 

Details of the bone-chilling assault surfaced soon after as people began to crowd the streets in protest, demanding justice for Jyoti Singh, also known today as Indiaâs daughter Nirbhaya.

© Reuters

And now, more than seven years later, delayed justice has been served with the hanging of the four Nirbhaya rapists who also murdered her in 2012. 

Hanged till death. Life is extinct. Justice has been served. The victory signs have been shown.

Amid all the hubbub and celebration outside the Tihar Jail premises this morning, one woman, in particular, was jubilant. 

She wasnât Nirbhayaâs relative, neither her friend nor her neighbour. She was a fellow woman, an honest well-wisher and a member of the Indian legal system celebrating a big win for every Indian rape victim and survivor.

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She is Nirbhayaâs lawyer Seema Samriddhi Kushwaha who fought a long and hard battle over the last seven years along with Nirbhayaâs parents, to bring them the justice they had been denied this long.

Here is everything we know about this woman with an iron grit, lawyer Seema Samriddhi Kushwaha:

1. Advocate Seema Kushwaha hails from the city of Etawah in Uttar Pradesh. 

2. She is a Delhi University graduate who completed her law degree in 2014.

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3. Currently, she is preparing for the UPSC examinations to become an IAS officer.

4. Then a law trainee, Seema had attended the protests held outside the Rashtrapati Bhavan after Nirbhayaâs case came into light, and decided just then that she would bring the culprits to justice.

5. She officially took over Nirbhayaâs case in 2014 and pushed for a Fast Track court listing.

6. This was her first case and she decided to fight it for free. She put up a strong fight against the convicts right from the lower to the higher court.

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7. In the same year, she joined the Nirbhaya Jyoti Trust as a legal advisor on January 24th.

8. Today, she works as a practising lawyer at the Indian Supreme Court in Delhi.

9. She now plans to fight the case of an 11-year-old girl, who was similarly gang-raped and murdered by six men in Biharâs Purnia.

Thanks to advocate Seema Kushwaha, Nirbhaya can finally rest in peace after a long wait, and India can celebrate a big win for its women and legal system.

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