Prita Jha was born in Ranchi, Bihar- She shifted to England aged 9 and was educated in the North of England. She has a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from University College London. She realized that Engineering was not for her as the two courses she loved most in the final year were, Law for Engineers and Language for Engineers, which involved spending 6 weeks in the Brest L’ecole de Telecommunication in France where she presented Gandhian thoughts in French in oral examination, much to the astonishment of the visiting English lecturers.
Prita became a solicitor and practiced as a family and Criminal solicitor in Manchester for many years and also did outreach work and training on the Domestic Violence legislation. She was also a member of the Management Committee of Saheli, the Asian women’s Refuge.
She has a MA in Development studies from University of Manchester and her life course took an unplanned direction in 2005 when she decided to live in India to work on the long-term Justice project Nyayagrah in Gujarat.
Prita Jha is a legal activist, researcher and trainer who has been engaging with issues of Justice in various capacities in India over the last ten years. She is the co-editor of a book with Surabhi Chopra, examining the Indian state’s record and response fulfilling its obligations to provide justice and reparation to victims across four episodes of mass violence. She has also taught courses on Gender and Criminal justice Administration at Nirma University , Gujarat.
Prita has researched and provided trainings to activists in Gujarat, Muzzaparnagar, Assam and Chattisgarh. She acts as a resource person at National Judicial Academy Bhopal on legislation relating to women and children.
She is the founder member and President of Peace and Equality Cell ( PEC) . Peace and Equality Cell provides free legal and moral support to survivors of child sexual abuse and regularly provides capacity building training on legislations to community activists.PEC has made very effective intervention on the issue of poor state of women’s shelters in Gujarat.by filing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL). This has led to the state being ordered to draft a new set of rules for all Shelters in Gujarat.
Prita has published articles on various aspects of implementation of the Domestic Violence Legislation in India. She loves being part of the long-term process to bring about social transformation in India on many fronts despite its extremely complicated social and criminal Justice Context.
