Author Pinki Virani’s works encompass gender and sexual aggression as also the politico-social violence being wrought on the vulnerable. With four books which are as much a weathervane to the contemporary history, sociology and cruelties of a country, her fifth broadens literature’s scope to present a global-first in publishing: Politics Of The Womb – The Perils Of Ivf, Surrogacy & Modified Babies. This book is a meticulously detailed work on the hormonal-medical violence only to force artificial reproduction.
The Author’s activism also leads to landmark legislation. Her campaigning for human dignity and individual rights has brought laws for the most powerless times in a person’s life: during sexual assault, in the beginning as a child, at the end as an irreversibly-ill patient.
Bitter Chocolate: Child Sexual Abuse in India roused a collective conscience on this crime upon children and assisted in the law protecting them from sexual abuse [POCSO Act].
Aruna’s Story: The True Story Of A Rape And Its Aftermath is the book with which the Author catalysed the law on Passive Euthanasia. The historic judgement-law was delivered by the Supreme Court of India in 2011. In 2016, Government of India began consultations with a view towards ratification through Parliament.
In 2011, for the first time in India, the Supreme Court judgement recognized Persistent Vegetative State as a valid medical condition; therefore, a legal one. There being a legal gap between ‘attempt to murder’ and ‘murder’, Pinki Virani pushed for the inclusion of PVS. India’s strengthened anti-rape law now includes PVS with the perpetrator who puts the victim in a vegetative state before, during or after sexual assault being on par with a murderer.
The Public Service Broadcasting Trust documentary on the Passive Euthanasia Law was premiered on India's national television network, Doordarshan. It is now available free for viewing on YouTube titled Passive Euthanasia: Kahani Karuna Ki
Another first to the Author's credit is the genre-bending book first released in 1999 which continues to be read by sociology students and secularists. This book, Once Was Bombay was cited by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in his speech on collapsing cities.
Deaf Heaven, Pinki Virani’s first work of fiction, was hailed by late eminent litterateur Khushwant Singh, "Ingeniously structured in its style of story-telling; a book which is profound and profane, all at once.”
Pinki Virani began working as a typist at age 18. In journalism she rose from reporter to India’s first woman editor of an eveninger. Her husband and she have chosen to be childfree.
