Know Our Team
SFLC.in is a dynamic team of volunteers who are lawyers and engineers, passionate individuals with their eyes set on making a difference in the world. Defending digital freedoms is at the core of our work. Our lawyers specialize in intellectual property laws, copyright law, software licensing, Internet governance and freedom of expression. Our engineers dive into the depths of ever increasing convergence of technology and society to find ways to defend the rights and freedoms with the help of law and policy.
Core Team
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Mythili Srinivasamurthy
Volunteer Legal Counsel
Mythili Srinivasamurthy completed B.A.,L.L.B. from University Law College, Bangalore University (2018) and L.L.M. (Corporate and Financial Law) from Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University (2021). Prior to joining SFLC.in in September, 2021, she practiced before the District Courts, Family Courts, Company Law Tribunals, Debt Recover Tribunals, Arbitration Tribunals, Consumer Protection Forums and High Courts at Delhi as well as Bengaluru. She has also worked as a legal consultant with different start-up ventures advising them on transactions, documentation, registration, legal compliance and regulatory issues. At SFLC.in, she heads litigation and is also involved in as research on laws regarding Intermediary Liabilities, Data Privacy and Data Protection.
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Orendra Singh
Full Stack Developer
Full stack developer at sflc.in
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Prasanth Sugathan
Legal Director
Prasanth Sugathan is a lawyer with years of practice in the fields of technology law, Intellectual property law, administrative law and constitutional law. He is an engineer turned lawyer and has worked closely with the Free Software community in India. He has appeared in many landmark cases before various Tribunals, High Courts and the Supreme Court of India. He has also deposed before Parliamentary Committees on issues related to Information Technology Act and Net Neutrality.
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Radhika Jhalani
Volunteer Legal Counsel
Radhika is currently a Counsel at SFLC.in. Prior to this, she was Digital Defender fellow at SFLC.in. She graduated in Philosophy from Hindu College and did her Law from Delhi University in 2019. She is passionate about culture, environment, and mental health apart from technology and human rights. She previously ran operations for an online film archive.
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Raju Devidas
Volunteer Technologist
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Rudhun Kumar
Office Executive
Rudhun is the backbone of our office. He is responsible for taking care of everything that is needed for things and people to work, from electricity to coffee.
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Sanjeev Prasad
Communications Manager
Alumni
Aditi Chaturvedi
Volunteer Counsel
NA
Amrita Sangeeth
Volunteer
Amrita is a lawyer who has a LLM from the University of Northampton,England. Experience in litigation, from tribunals to High Court. Practiced as a Lawyer in the High Court of Kerala, Labour courts, Consumer protection Forum, dealt with cases relating to labour laws, consumer protection laws, Civil and criminal laws, appeared as an interpreter to courts. Been an active member of a charitable society in India and abroad. In which conducted counseling, providing free legal aid and camps for Law awareness and environmental protection classes to public, settling disputes, against racism etc. She is practising at Kerala High Court.
Basil Ajith
Volunteer
Basil is a practising advocate who associates with SFLC.IN as Counsel. He has conducted Digital Security Training sessions across different organisations, and conducted research for SFLC.IN. Basil is a computing enthusiast codes useful scripts in Python. He had undergone formal education on Digital Forensics (as part of his Master’s of Law programme). As a result of this, he is a FOSS enthusiast and uses GNU/Linux based tools.
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Biju Nair
Executive Director
Biju K. Nair is a litigator having worked in various jurisdictions across India. His areas of practice extend from Corporate and Commercial Law, Arbitration & Dispute Resolution, Property Law, Competition Law, Trademarks and Copyrights and Constitutional Law. Biju K. Nair earned his Law Degree (B.A LL.B.) from Army Institute of Law. He served as an Executive Director from Jan 2017- April 2019.
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Harjodh Singh
Volunteer
Harjodh Singh is a lawyer who has completed his LL.M. in Intellectual Property Rights from National Law University, Jodhpur. Prior to joining SFLC.IN, Harjodh was a lawyer in reputed law firms dealing in Corporate Law, Litigation and Intellectual Property. Prior to his LL.M., Harjodh did a five year BA.LLB. course from Army Institute of Law, Mohali affiliated to Punjab University, Patiala. He was associated with us for a period of six months in 2013.
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Kushagra Sinha
Volunteer Legal Counsel
Litigation and Intermediary Liability lead
Kushagra completed his five year course in law from National Law University Odisha in 2015. He started his career as an in-house counsel with the corporate advisory team of Ola Cabs, Bangalore. After finishing his stint with Ola, Kushagra switched to litigation in 2017. Having practiced in the courts for a few years, he has gained considerable experience in diverse areas of law, having represented clients before various tribunals, the trial courts in Delhi, the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India. He joined the SFLC.in team in April, 2020.
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Mishi Choudhary
Founder and Ex-President
Mishi Choudhary is working with SFLC following the completion of her fellowship during which she earned her LLM from Columbia Law School and was a Stone Scholar. Prior to joining forces with SFLC in 2006, she practiced as a High Court and Supreme Court litigator in New Delhi. At SFLC, Mishi is the primary legal representative of many of the world’s most significant free software developers and non-profit distributors, including Debian, the Apache Software Foundation, and OpenSSL.In 2010, she founded SFLC.in, since which time she has divided her time between New York and New Delhi. Under her direction, SFLC.in has become the premier non-profit organization representing the rights of Internet users and free software developers in India.As of 2015, Mishi is the only lawyer in the world simultaneously to appear on briefs in the US and Indian Supreme Courts in the same Term. She consults with and advises established businesses and startups using free software in their products and service offerings in the US, Europe, India, China and Korea. In 2015 she was named one of the Asia Society’s 21 young leaders building Asia’s future.
In addition to an LLM, she has an LLB degree and a bachelors degree in political science from the University of Delhi. Mishi is a member of the Bar Council of Delhi, licensed to appear before the Supreme Court of India, all the State High Courts in India, in the State of New York, and before the Southern District of New York.
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Prakash Deb Roy
Volunteer
Prakash Deb Roy is a graduate engineer with a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science & Engineering from West Bengal University of Technology. He completed his LL.B with Hons. in Intellectual Property Rights from Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He joined SFLC.IN for six months project on Internet-governance in 2013.
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Priyanka Chaudhuri
Volunteer
Priyanka Chaudhuri joined SFLC.in after procuring his B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) from Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur in 2016. At SFLC.in, her work focuses on a range of issues including freedom of speech and expression, intermediary liability. She represents the organization at various legal and policy platforms, and has been involved in several crucial campaigns that brought about substantial changes in India’s technology regulatory landscape. Her areas of professional interest include technology law, human rights law, constitutional law and Intellectual property laws.
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Prosenjit Mondal
Volunteer
A lawyer who has completed his LL.B with Hons. in Intellectual Property Rights from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He has completed his B.Tech in Information Technology from National Institute of Technology, Durgapur. He is a IBM certified professional in Linux TCP/IP Administration. His expertise lies in the field of Patent Law, Copyright Law, Trademark Law and Technology Laws. He joined SFLC.IN for a six months project on Internet-governance in 2013.
Rishab Bailey
Volunteer
Mr. Rishab Bailey is an alumni from the National Law School of India University, and began practice with the litigation team at Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A Shroff & Co., Mumbai. He is from the last two years been working with various human rights activists and NGO’s in Delhi. Notable amongst them are the Society for Knowledge Commons – which aims to use the FOSS model based on collaboration, community and shared ownership of knowledge to address challenges faced in areas such as education, the sciences and arts. Currently he is working as a legal consultant with National Institute of public Finance and Policy.
Shagun Belwal
Volunteer
Shagun completed her BSL LLB from the Indian Law Society’s Law College, Pune. Her areas of interest include Intellectual Property Law, Media Law and Constitutional Law.
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Sundar Krishnan
Executive Director
Sundar comes with over 20 years of experience in Management and Coordination of large and complex projects in Livelihood and Education domain including Information & Communication Technology (ICT) for Development.
He has led large teams with a demonstrated track record of developing and scaling complex operational models in the education and development sectors, that has resulted in high impact outcomes with multiple state governments in India.
Before joining SFLC, he has worked with International NGOs, Academia and Private Organisations like UNDP, Media Lab Asia,. Interra Information Technologies, American India Foundation and Reach to Teach.
Sundar holds a Masters in Electronic Science and MBA from Delhi University.
Surendran Balachandran
Volunteer
He was our chief technologist. He is a FOSS activist and a software engineer working at SFLC.in. He studied law from Indian Law Institute At SFLC.in, he works as a systems administrator, software developer, technology analyst and advisor. He is currently working with SocialCops.
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Talish Ray
Volunteer
Talish Ray is a lawyer with almost a decade of experience fighting battles inside courtrooms. Her areas of practice include Property and Intellectual Property Law, Corporate Law and Commercial Law, Arbitration and dispute resolution, Constitutional and Administrative law, Competition and Information Technology Law. She worked with SFLC.IN for two years.
Governing Body
Dr. Nagarjuna G
Executive Member
Dr. Nagarjuna G is one of the founding members of the FSF India and is currently serving as its Chairperson. He is a faculty at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education,TIFR in Mumbai. He is an author and maintainer of the GNU project GNOWSYS, and leads the gnowledge.org lab in Mumbai. He holds M.Sc.(Biology), M.A. (Philosophy) from University of Delhi and Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in the area of Philosophy of Science.
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Faisal Farooqui
Secretary
Faisal Farooqui is a highly recognized IT entrepreneur who is among the trailblazers of his generation. He was among the lead petitioners who challenged the various sections of the IT Act, which finally resulted in a victory for the entire nation, when the Supreme Court declared 66A as illegal and diluted many other sections. As a result no more arrests for speaking your mind. No more content takedown without a court order.
Faisal is the founder and CEO of MouthShut.com, India’s largest consumer review and recommendation platform, with reviews on lakhs of products
Faisal has addressed and presented at more than 300 national and international conferences and seminars including at IIM Ahmadabad and IIT Mumbai. His work on Internet Technology, Branding, Entrepreneurship, social media and e-commerce has appeared or been profiled in almost all major newspaper and magazines and TV channels in India as well as Wall Street Journal, CNN, BBC and Financial Times. He is also internationally recognized for his thoughts on integrating consumer-generated content with mobile and social media. He served on the Internet Task Force of NASSCOM and was an advisor to TIE for India’s new Copyright Act. The British High Commission has included Faisal among the list of top 50 young leaders who’ve demonstrated potential to change the country.
Faisal has a degree in Information Systems and Finance from State University of New York.
He is a self-confessed tech geek, enjoys growing vegetables and loves horse-riding.
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Mamtaa Verma
Treasurer
Mamtaa Verma is responsible for the administration and financial coordination for SFLC.IN She is a treasurer in SFLC.IN’ s board and in charge of Board meetings and related procedural activities. Prior to joining SFLC, she worked as an Executive with GE Capital Finance Pvt Ltd. Mamta is a Chartered Financial Analyst and holds a Bachelor degree in Commerce ( Hons.) from the Delhi University.
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Prof. Rahul De
Ex President
Prof. Rahul De is the Hewlett-Packard Chair Professor in ICT for Sustainable Economic Development at IIM Bangalore. He has a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, an MBA from the University of Delhi, and a Ph.D. from the Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A.
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Sairee Chahal
EXECUTIVE MEMBER
Sairee Chahal is the Founder, CEO of SHEROES – a community platform for women, offering support, resources, opportunities, and interactions via Sheroes.com and the SHEROES App. Sairee is credited with building up women at work and future-of-work conversations in India, besides building a strong technology play to solve the problems of gender disparity in India. A technology entrepreneur, Sairee has straddled the best of both worlds in her ventures Newslink, Fleximoms, and now SHEROES. Her community-meets-deep technology approach has made SHEROES a globally formidable platform, changing the game for women and their aspirations. Over a million women have been directly benefited, and under Sairee’s leadership, SHEROES aims to impact over 100 million women in the next five years.
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Satish Babu
President
Satish Babu is a Free Software activist, Internet advocate and development professional based out of Kerala, India. He is the founding Director of the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), an autonomous academic/research institution of the Government of Kerala, India, where he worked from March 2011 to September 2015. He was earlier the CEO of SIFFS, a co-founder and President of InApp Information Technologies, and is associated with several national and international professional societies such as IEEE and the Computer Society of India (CSI).
Satish has been active in Internet Governance since the 2009 IGF. He was a Fellow of the 2012 European Summer School in Internet Governance (EuroSSIG). He is associated with ICANN since 2012 and with ISOC as a member since 2009. He was appointed the Interim Chair of the Asian, Australasian and Pacific Islands Regional At-Large Organization (APRALO) of ICANN in Sep 2016, and elected as Chair in Nov 2016.
Advisory Board
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Alolita Sharma
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
Alolita is a senior manager at AWS where she leads open source observability engineering and collaboration for OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Cortex, Grafana. Alolita is co-chair of the CNCF Technical Advisory Group for Observability, member of the OpenTelemetry Governance Committee and a board director of the Unicode Consortium. She has served on the boards of the OSI. Alolita has led engineering teams at Wikipedia, Twitter, PayPal and IBM. Alolita has been one of the core group of people who has helped find SFLC.in and has been a supporter since its inception in various roles.
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Anivar Aravind
Advisory Board Member
Anivar A. Aravind is Founder Executive Director of Indic Project, a civic-tech non-profit initiative works on language engineering, technology standards and digital rights of native language users. He is a software engineering executive, mentor and strategist with 12+ years progressive experience in mentoring many free and open source software projects and start-ups in social technology space to find their feet, assisting in various capacities. Anivar’s passion is in the intersection of technology, policy and law with from the perspective of human rights & software freedom.
Anivar has a long track record of initiating, sustaining and running various technical, policy and developer platforms and mobilizing people support and participation in such initiatives. He has deep understanding on Internet ecosystem and standardisation process and actively engages with Internet Governance and various digital rights campaigns.
He has taken leadership role in free Software and free Knowledge communities of scale like Mozilla, Libreoffice, & Wikipedia. Over the years he helped in building and sustaining FOSS language technology communities like Swathanthra Malayalam Computing(SMC) in India, Initiated successful advocacy efforts on ICT public policy Improvements, and contributed to the launch and maintenance of many thematic and regional networks & conferences. He is a Mozilla Rep and contributing member of Software in Public Interest(SPI), Python Software Foundation(PSF) &The Document Foundation(TDF).
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Bishakha Datta
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
Bishakha Datta is an Indian filmmaker, activist, and former journalist. She is the co-founder and executive director of Point of View, based in Mumbai, a non-profit working in the area of gender, sexuality, and women’s rights. She also serves on the board of nonprofit organizations including Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action and the Wikimedia Foundation (2010-2014), where she was the first Indian to serve on the board of trustees. Her most recent book is 9 Degrees of Justice, a collection of essays on struggles against violence on women in India.
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Deepak Maheshwari
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
Deepak Maheshwari is the senior visiting fellow at ICRIER and a public policy professional with more than 20 years of experience in Information Technology, Telecom, Cyber Security, Data Protection, E-Commerce, Digital Payments, and Corporate Social Responsibility across India, ASEAN, and China. He has worked in Symantec, MasterCard, Microsoft, Sify, and HCL.
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Dr. Jaijit Bhattacharya
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
Dr. Jaijit Bhattacharya is the Founder & CEO of Zerone Microsystems Pvt Ltd & President of the Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research. He is a noted expert in Technology policies and Technology led societal transformation. He has had a significant impact on the thinking around indigenous development of key digital utilities. He is a former head of the Centre for Fourth Industrial Revolution in India, World Economic Forum and former Head and Partner, Economics and Policy Practice, KPMG. He is a recipient of the APJ Abdul Kalam Award for innovation in governance, and Global Corporate Affairs Leadership award for a decade of contribution, and the “Shiksha Rattan Award” for excellence in teaching. He was also an Advisor to the President’s office of Sri Lanka on e-Governance and ICT Policy as part of the Centre for e-governance.
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Geeta Seshu
Advisory Board Member
Mumbai-based Geeta Seshu was once principal correspondent of ‘The Indian Express’. Today, she lectures on the media at several universities, including Bombay University, SNDT University, Marathwada University and Symbiosis. She was also the editor of the magazine, ‘Humanscape’. She has written for WFS and one of her recent pieces dealt with a filmmaker’s attempt to understand the life of her domestic help.
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OSAMA MANZAR
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
Osama Manzar is Senior Ashoka Fellow and British Chevening Scholar who founded Digital Empowerment Foundation which has empowered more than 25 million people in India and several global south. He has served on various committees at MeiTY, MIB, CII, and served boards of APC, World Summit Awards, World Wide Web Foundation’s A4AI, Down To Earth, and many more.
twitter: @osamamanzar
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Prabir Purkayastha
Advisory Board Member
Prabir Purkayastha is a an engineer and a science activist in the power, telecom and software sectors. He is one of the founding members of Delhi Science Forum and its Secretary. He has written and published extensively a variety of science and technology policy issues in several leading journals and newspapers including ‘Economic and Political Weekly’, ‘Times of India’ and a number of Delhi Science Forum publications.
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Priti Krishtel
Advisory Board Member
Priti Radhakrishnan is Co-Founder and Director of Treatment Access of I-MAK. Priti has obtained her law degree from New York University (NYU) School of Law and has worked as a health attorney in the U.S., Switzerland and India. Prior to founding I-MAK, she served as the Senior Project Officer of the Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit in India.
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Rishab Aiyer Ghosh
Advisory Board Member
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh is an Open Source Initiative board member. He is Founding International and Managing Editor of peer -reviewed journal First Monday and Programme Leader of FLOSS at UNU-MERIT. He has undertaken several studies on Free Software which he terms “FLOSS” – an alternative term for Free Software which he is credited with coining.
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Smriti Parsheera
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
Smriti Parsheera is a lawyer and public policy researcher. Her work focuses on issues of data governance and digital rights, regulatory processes and competition policy. She is currently a Fellow with the CyberBRICS Project hosted by FGV Law School, Brazil and a PhD scholar at IIT Delhi’s School of Public Policy. Before this, she was involved in setting up and led the technology policy work at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. She has also worked with the Competition Commission of India, the United Nations Development Programme and the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission.
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Tahir Amin
Advisory Board Member
Tahir Amin is I-MAK’s Co-Founder and Director of Intellectual Property. Tahir practised as a solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales with two of the leading IP firms in the UK and also served as an in-house global IP manager for a multinational company.He has over 15 years experience in prosecuting, licensing, opposing and litigating trademarks, patents, and designs.
Vickram Crishna
Advisory Board Member
Vickram Crishna, is a technologist, a human rights activist, an activist for personal privacy protection, and has been a practitioner and a commentator on media, technology and management practices. He was involved with the development of the Hawking Communicator, software designed to replace the traditional point-and-click computer interface paradigm. He is currently engaged in doctoral research related to the development of communication technologies for persons with palpable physical/sensory challenges.
SOCIAL MEDIA