Noted educator and women’s rights activist Mary Roy passed away on Thursday. She was 89. Mary, the mother of Booker prize winning writer Arundhati Roy, is widely known for winning a landmark Supreme Court lawsuit in 1986, famously dubbed the ‘Mary Roy case’, which ensured equal rights in family property for women belonging to the Syrian Christian community from Kerala. Roy founded the Corpus Christi High School in Kottayam in 1967.
The school was later renamed Pallikoodam. Born in 1933, Mary Roy was the daughter of P.V. Isaac, an entomologist by profession. She did her schooling at the Jesus and Mary Convent in Delhi and earned her degree from Queen's Mary College in Chennai.