When “MOTHER-in-LAW” was a tribute.

In 1958, Leila Seth wrote the London Bar exam and topped it at the age of 27, becoming the first woman to do so.

Next day a prominent London newspaper carried a photograph of a young Leila Seth with her infant son, born only a few months before the exams with a bold headline “MOTHER-IN-LAW”.

At the same time, other British newspapers expressed their GRIEF about how out of 580 students who took the Bar Exam, a MARRIED Indian woman TOPPED it.

In the same year she also cleared the civil services examination as an IAS officer.

Leila Seth was born on this day: 20 October 1930 in Lucknow.

She was the mother of the acclaimed Indian author Vikram Seth and was instrumental in the change in the IPC 377.