India’s top court reviews homosexuality ban
NEW DELHI: India’s top court began reviewing yesterday petitions against a colonial-era ban on homosexuality, in the latest chapter of a legal tussle between social and religious conservatives and more liberal Indians.
Section 377 of the penal code, a relic from 1860s British legislation, bans gay acts as ‘carnal intercourse against the order of nature’ and allows for jail terms of up to life, although prosecutions are rare.
In 2009, the Delhi High Court effectively decriminalised gay sex, saying a ban violated fundamental rights, but the Supreme Court reinstated it in 2013 after religious groups successfully appealed.
The Supreme Court said the High Court had overstepped its authority and that the responsibility for changing the law rested with lawmakers not the courts. Efforts to introduce legislation however came to nothing.
In January this year however, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge by a clutch of high-profile Indians who said the law created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in the world’s largest democracy. — AFP