Priyadarshini Mattoo would have been 47 today. She would have perhaps been a top criminal lawyer, rubbing shoulders with the high and the mighty in Lutyens’ Delhi. Perhaps could even be a feminist advocating women rights. She could have, beyond any doubt, been a woman of substance, inching higher academically and professionally to serve the society better.

Our imagination can run far and wide on what potentially the bright Delhi University law faculty student could have been, if only she hadn’t been brutally raped and murdered on 23 January 1996.