Colin Gonsalves

Gonsalves took a BTech in civil engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, graduating in 1975, and worked as a civil engineer. Drawn into trade union and labour advocacy, he began studying law at night from 1979 and obtained an LLB from the University of Mumbai in 1983.

In 1983 Gonsalves co-founded the India Centre for Human Rights and Law in Mumbai. The work expanded into the Human Rights Law Network, established in 1989, which grew to include more than 200 lawyers, paralegals and activists working across India. He also helped develop the Indian People's Tribunal, a body of retired judges that investigates human rights violations.

His litigation has covered the right to food, disability rights, adoption rights for religious minorities, compensation for survivors of acid attacks, the anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal in 2008, alleged fake encounters in Manipur, and the proposed deportation of Rohingya refugees. Many of these cases established precedents in Indian constitutional law.

Gonsalves received the NCPEDP-Shell Helen Keller Award in 2003, the International Human Rights Award of the American Bar Association in 2004, the Mother Teresa Memorial Award for Social Justice in 2010, and the Right Livelihood Award in 2017, the last citing his use of public interest litigation over three decades to secure fundamental rights for India's most marginalised citizens. He has also received an honorary doctorate from Middlesex University and a Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Bombay.[2][3][4]