Amrit is an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which advocates individual rights by litigating, legislating, and educating the American public on a broad array of issues affecting individual freedom.

Her outspoken campaign against the Bush administration's contempt for civil liberties earned her a front page report in The Wall Street Journal some weeks ago.

Amrit, 36, a graduate of the prestigious Yale Law School, is the only one of the prime minister's three daughters who lives abroad. The eldest daughter teaches at a college in New Delhi and is married to a fellow academic while the middle daughter works for an NGO and is married to an Indian Police Service officer.

Amrit is a consistent critic of US President George W Bush -- who is known to greatly respect her father -- and has raised issues of abuse of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. She also helped win a legal decision to have the Pentagon release photographs illustrating this abuse in 2005.

Photograph: Mohammed Jaffer/Snaps India