Two visually impaired lawyers helping people find their way to justice, one phone call at a time

One hour, many voices – how it all began

Jain had just stepped into law school when, on the third day, he received a call from an acquaintance seeking legal advice about a potential divorce. Barely a full-fledged law student, but people were already turning to him for help.

It didn’t take long for him to realise that many were hesitant to reach out to professionals for legal aid, sometimes due to fee-related barriers, at other times due to the stigma attached to it.

An idea slowly took shape in his mind.

The plan was simple enough. To normalise legal consultations, like any other such visits to doctors or counsellors.

Things moved faster when he reconnected with his friend Bajaj. “Rahul and I have been friends since he was in Class 11 and wanted to pursue law,” says Jain, now 35. Powered by a shared impulse, the nascent idea took a clearer direction.

Every Thursday, between 5.30 and 6.30 pm, the two have taken time out of their busy schedules for the weekly legal helpline, which offers legal guidance. A simple format, a phone conversation, a range of legal concerns, and catered solutions by both.

The initiative took off, and it developed wings of its own. Within an hour, Jain says, “all kinds of problems came forward.”

With the requests and queries becoming far more universal, the helpline began to extend support to anyone who sought legal advice.

At its core, the idea remains grounded and with the same mindset of providing legal assistance, while making the process more approachable and accessible to people with disabilities and those who are not financially sound. For people who require sign language communication, Bajaj and Jain also added an option to connect on WhatsApp, leaving no stone unturned to ensure that the inability to communicate itself does not become a barrier.

The duo has a similar helpline called ‘Certline’ for disability certification-related queries, especially for people with disabilities. For disabled people, the first step to accessing social protection is having a disability certificate and a unique disability ID, which is a very difficult process in India, they tell The Indian Express.

No assistance, just pure intent

Nothing worth having comes easy, as was the case with their mission. Jain and Bajaj faced their own set of limitations during the initial days. They had no resources, no team to help with the research work, or to draft notices. Despite seeing no way to carry forward the outreach, they never let it overpower their core intent.

The team has a small office in Delhi from where Amar Jain, Rahul Bajaj and two others operate.

They started with small steps. A WhatsApp group was created at first, bringing people with similar interests together, such as law students and legal volunteers – a simple ask, a simple vision, turned into a contribution to make the system more structured, building a strong support system for the underprivileged.

They named it ‘Mission Accessibility’, a reflection of the ground reality of their lived experiences.

The initiative, launched in 2021 with a small community, has hundreds of members today, including persons with disabilities and volunteers who want to work through the gaps that exist in our system to make legal aid more accessible.

Blind since birth, Bajaj, 31, was born and brought up in Nagpur, where he studied in a mainstream school, as his parents insisted on exposing him to a mainstream educational environment. “Not to say that special schools don’t have their own value, but from the perspective of gaining a more holistic experience of what it takes to succeed in the world, it was my parents’ thought process that studying in a mainstream school would be important,” Bajaj adds.

He went to the University of Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship for his post-graduation, and has been practising in India since returning. During 2020-21, he worked with Justice D Y Chandrachud, who was a sitting judge in the Supreme Court at the time before he took over as the Chief Justice of India in 2022.

Breaking the stereotype 

Usually, when blind people pursue higher studies, they are encouraged to choose teaching or music as a profession or, at best, the banking industry. But Jain started looking at a few more options, including marketing management, hotel management, law, computer science, CA, etc. “While I have huge respect for all the industries and professions, I wanted to do something different,” he says.

Jain studied in a blind school in Jodhpur till Class 12 before moving to Mumbai to pursue law. “My parents shifted with me. I studied at Government Law College Mumbai, and then worked with law firms for about 7.5 years before making this move,” he says.

He credits his father for giving him the freedom to explore the world on his own terms, which was crucial to building his confidence. A turning point in his childhood was when he wanted to learn to skate, like his brother. Though his parents were apprehensive that he might fall, he insisted. “I held onto the walls, and then slowly, I left the walls, and I could walk into a given porch without anybody’s help.”

Jain’s professional journey was nothing short of learning opportunities. When he started working at a law firm, he was certain that challenges were headed his way, but luckily, he had very understanding senior partners, who made sure to create an inclusive atmosphere that helped him work to the best of his potential and at par with others.

“They were very open to talk to clients, and also do peer sensitisation or colleague sensitisation whenever required,” Jain says.

His father was the chief source of inspiration. “He was my best friend, a person I could fight with tooth and nail. I could share everything with him, and whatever values I have, I imbibed from him,” he shares.

Bajaj says that at different points in his life, different people were his role models. “I don’t believe that any one person can really serve as a role model because everyone has their own imperfections, which you are not exposed to, if you don’t know them well enough.”

He grew up watching cricket and looked up to Sourav Ganguly, one of India’s most successful cricketers, in terms of his leadership style, his never-say-never attitude, and his ability not to get pushed around.

Bajaj was also deeply moved by the autobiography of US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who battled obstacles, like losing her father to alcoholism, and dealt with diabetes since her childhood, yet emerged out of very impoverished circumstances to pursue a world-class education. “Different people have inspired me in different ways,” he says.

On the amendment to Transgender Rights Act 

The recent amendment to the Transgender Protection of Rights Act, 2019, is a step backwards when it comes to the recognition and protection of transgender people’s rights in the country, says Bajaj.

On the aspect of ‘possibility of misuse’, he says that “if you see the 2019 act at present, it doesn’t even talk about the grant of reservation,” the benefits that it gives are non-discrimination, inclusive education, and employment. “So are we saying that these basic entitlements to equality are going to get misused by somebody perceiving to have a gender identity which is trans, right? What is the misuse that we are even talking about that?” he adds.

Rewriting accessibility in courts 

Accessibility often exists on paper rather than in practice, they point out. Unless you go out to relevant judges or officials you know, things may not really move.

Bajaj says functional accessibility committees within the judiciary are “very important” for the representation of people with disabilities, so that judges, court staff, and the people of the bar and the bench can be sensitised on the needs and reasonable accommodation requests that both litigants and lawyers with disabilities have.

A system is required to track cases of people with disabilities to ensure that such cases are heard systematically, given priority and disposed of effectively, Bajaj adds. Once the matter is registered with the courts, the procedural delays attributed to our system often result in cases not being heard and disposed of in a timely fashion.

However, he points to some successful examples, like the Delhi High Court and even the Supreme Court, where they have come up with small administrative changes to accommodate cases of people with disabilities on a priority basis. “It needs to be done on a perennial basis.”

Making sure that the e-filing system is made accessible for people with disabilities, both litigants and lawyers, also plays a vital role, Bajaj says, adding that similar reforms are also needed in tribunals and other quasi-judicial bodies, including the Central Administrative Tribunal, consumer forums at the district, state and national levels, Company Law tribunals, etc.

Accessibility, audit and compliance are a must to ensure that the infrastructure, both digital and physical, is accessible to lawyers and litigants with disabilities. The opposing parties, as well as the lawyers appearing for them, also need to be sensitised, he explains, in addition to the Bar councils, the high court and district Bar associations.

Bajaj believes that sustained funding for lawyers who deal with disability rights cases will go a long way, as their clients are seldom in a position to pay the legal fee that is typically charged. He says legal aid committees can also conduct outreach activities to ensure that people with disabilities can avail of the legal aid that they are entitled to under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987.

Battle that began early

The battle for disabled people often begins early in life. Long before courtrooms and careers, it starts in classrooms, which are rarely designed keeping them in mind. Jain had his own share of challenges, starting with transitioning from a Hindi medium to an English medium institution. His biggest challenge? Accessing the study material.

“Everybody looked at me with sympathy. They thought a blind person has come, let’s give him notes and study materials so he can at least pass,” Jain recalls. While he did his college from an institution which had people with and without disabilities, he says there was no level playing field since he could not read or take his own notes. “Navigating that environment became quite difficult.”

Jain’s father would scan and edit the books so he could study by himself. Initially, the challenges proved difficult for him, like travelling and adjusting to a fast-paced city like Mumbai, but it soon turned into a fun-filled ride.

People with disabilities constantly have to prove themselves, because when another person with equal merit and qualifications can be hired, why would anyone choose somebody with a disability?

While the legal profession is known for high-pressure timelines and work that demands perfection, it becomes significant for one to perform well to make a mark, as Jain realised soon after he started his legal journey.

As for Jain, he relied much on assistance in the early days of his career, which proved detrimental because a typical law firm looks at things purely from a billable model.

Looking ahead

Mission Accessibility, which began as a two-person effort, is now steadily evolving into a larger force. Alongside Amar Jain and Rahul Bajaj, Sarah and Amritesh Mishra have been carrying the team forward with the same intent of contributing and building a more structured and scalable model for helping people with legal guidance.

Clockwise from top left: Amritesh Mishra, Sarah, Rahul Bajaj and Amar Jain.

The team is looking forward to expanding the mission and covering other marginalised groups, beyond people with disabilities, like workers in the informal sector who need support.

“We have been conscious of our own limitations, as well as how much we can realistically do,” they say, but going forward, they are planning to do this at a greater scale and also supplement it with camps for people to come and directly present their queries.

“Obviously, institutional support would definitely be welcome. If we can, for example, raise some CSR funds for something like this on a dedicated basis, that can really go a long way in scaling it up,” Bajaj says.

No shortcuts. Only a system that needs to be called out and restructured. In their own way, these young lawyers are reshaping the idea of justice for all – by making everyone feel seen.