Social worker Mary Roy dead

Kottayam: Noted educationist and social worker Mary Roy, whose legal battle ensured equal rights for Syrian Christian women in their ancestral property, died on Thursday, family sources said.

She was 89. Her end came at 9.15 AM at her residence in the suburb of this town due to age-related ailments, they said. Roy, mother of writer and Man Booker Prize Winner Arundhati Roy and Lalith Roy, is also the founder of the famous Pallikoodam school.

To enable people to pay tribute, her body will be kept at her residence in Pallikoodam campus for viewing from 3 PM to 9 PM on Thursday and on September 2 from 7 AM to noon in the MR Block, Pallikoodam campus, the family said. Her funeral will be held in the afternoon.

 It was in the mid-1980, Roy had launched a legal battle in the Supreme Court seeking gender equality for women in inheritance in the ancestral property of the Syrian Christian families in Kerala.

In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court in 1986 allowed her plea. Overturning the provisions in the Travancore Succession Act of 1916 of the princely state of Travancore, the Supreme Court ruled that women members of the community had equal rights in their father’s property.

The case, fought against her brothers seeking her equal rights over her deceased father’s property, is known as the “Mary Roy case” in Indian legal history.