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As a young lawyer in 2005, Ribhu petitioned the Delhi High Court (Save the Childhood Movement vs NCT of Delhi) for the criminalisation of child labour in India. Ribhu was part of the drafting of the amended Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 (amended in 2016), that laid the framework for abolition of child labour under the age of 18.

 

By reframing child marriage as a criminal justice issue—emphasising that child marriage is child rape— Ribhu has brought unprecedented global attention to this insidious evil. His efforts have ignited a transformative movement globally, with the goal of reaching the tipping point of ending child marriage by 2030. Ribhu’s visionary roadmap for a Child Marriage Free India, coupled with the momentum generated by the grassroots movement of Just Rights for Children partners, culminated on November 27, 2024, when the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India, launched the Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat campaign.

 

Ribhu’s comprehensive PICKET strategy is a blueprint to create a child marriage-free India by reaching a tipping point to end child marriages by 2030 through Policy, Institutions, Capacity-building, Knowledge, Economics, and Technology. First introduced in his debut book “When Children have Children: Tipping Point to End Child Marriage” (2023), this strategy has so far been adopted by 416 districts across India. In another landmark judgment on child marriage in November 2024, the Supreme Court expanded and endorsed Ribhu’s PICKET framework as a structured and comprehensive guide to combat child marriage in the country.

 

Ribhu took this momentum of the Child Marriage Free India campaign across borders starting with Nepal. On December 31, 2024, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli pledged to make Nepal child marriage-free, and launched the Child Marriage Free Nepal campaign. This milestone in the fight against child marriage saw over 250 million people across 30 countries joining the campaign and taking a pledge against child marriage, making the Child Marriage Free World the most audacious campaign for children worldwide.

 

Over the past two decades, through more than 60 strategic public interest litigations (PILs) and other cases filed before the Supreme Court and several High Courts, Ribhu has spearheaded the transformation of the child protection response mechanism, shifting it from a social justice perspective to a criminal justice framework. In 2011, through a case filed and argued by Ribhu, the Supreme Court defined trafficking of persons, aligning it with the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. This landmark case led to the inclusion of a specific offence against trafficking in the Indian Penal Code.

 

The Justice Verma Committee, established to recommend legal reforms following the Nirbhaya gangrape case in 2012, included Ribhu’s proposals to add new offences such as the accountability of public servants, stalking, voyeurism, trafficking, exploitation of a trafficked individual among others in the committees’ recommendations to the government. He has also deposed before various Parliamentary Committees on labour reforms, women and child safety, and trafficking.

 

Grounded in evidence and experience, Ribhu’s work brought the issue of missing children in India to the forefront, leading to a landmark judgment by the Supreme Court in 2013. The judgment mandated the compulsory registration of all missing children cases, applied the Doctrine of Presumption of Crime in trafficking or kidnapping cases, and directed the creation of standard operating procedures for investigating missing children cases. This alone has resulted in more than 100,000 children not going missing in India each year.

 

Judgments in cases led by Ribhu have achieved results in child and women safety laws, including the Prevention of Sexual Offences Against Children Act, reforms in the legal frameworks on child marriage, child labour and child trafficking, and the establishment of critical institutional mechanisms including Child Welfare Committees and Juvenile Justice Boards. His work led to reform of the Juvenile Justice Act in 2015. Ribhu was the petitioner of the landmark Supreme Court judgment on September 23, 2024, which introduced the term ‘Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material (CSEAM)’ to replace “child pornography”. This shift underlined the exploitation and abuse of the child, highlighting the criminal nature of the acts

 

In addition, Ribhu assisted the Government of India in defending the Fundamental Right to Education before the Supreme Court. Cases filed by him have led to the development of the National Action Plan for Drug Demand Reduction 2016 and the inclusion of child rights education in the National Education Policy (2020).

 

His second book, “Just Rights: Why Justice should be a Fundamental Right” (2024), proposes an original perspective on the essential relationship between the state and the individual, arguing that the fundamental right to justice must serve as the fulcrum for balance in society and consciousness.

 

Ribhu holds a degree in law from the University of Delhi and is a registered advocate with the Bar Council of Delhi.