The Supreme Court of India, in a significant development on Thursday, disposed of curative petitions challenging the 2013 judgment that upheld Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code criminalizing homosexuality.
The bench, comprising Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices B R Gavai, Bela Trivedi, Pankaj Mithal, and Manoj Misra, declared the petitions as infructuous in light of the landmark 2018 judgment.
The original dispute stemmed from the case Naz Foundation Vs Union of India, wherein the Delhi High Court, in 2009, struck down Section 377 IPC. However, the 2013 ruling by a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court in Suresh Kumar Koushal Vs Naz Foundation overturned the Delhi High Court’s decision, upholding the validity of Section 377. Despite subsequent review petitions being dismissed by the SC in January 2014, the legal battle persisted.
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In 2018, a watershed moment occurred when a five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court, hearing a batch of writ petitions in the case Navtej Singh Johar Vs Union of India, held that consensual same-sex relationships among adults cannot be criminalized. The bench struck down the relevant provision, emphasizing the importance of constitutional morality over a majoritarian viewpoint. The judgment affirmed the equal rights of the LGBT community as citizens of the country.
Despite this progressive shift, curative petitions filed in 2014 against the 2013 Suresh Koushal judgment have languished until now. Curative petitions serve as the final judicial recourse for addressing grievances, typically decided by judges in-chamber, with open court hearings being rare.
With the closure of these curative petitions, the legal saga surrounding the decriminalization of homosexuality in India takes another significant step forward, reaffirming the rights and dignity of LGBTQ+ individuals in the country.
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