New Delhi: The Supreme Court Monday sought the Centre's reply on a PIL seeking equal protection in law to transgender people on the grounds that there was no penal provision which protects them from offences of sexual assault. A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde said that it was a "good case" which needed a hearing.
The bench, also comprising Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, asked senior advocate Vikas Singh, representing petitioner lawyer Reepak Kansal, to file details of cases where the court had passed orders in the absence of laws to deal with issues.
In a hearing conducted via video conferencing, the bench referred to the framing of the Vishaka guidelines to deal with sexual harassment of women at workplaces and the decriminalization of consensual gay sex by the apex court in the absence of laws. Singh said he would be filing such details as asked by the court.
The plea, which has made the ministries of law and justice, and social justice and empowerment as parties, has referred to the provisions of the IPC of 1860 as also to the recent amendments to the statute and other laws on sexual offences and alleged that none of them talked about the "transgender, transsexuals, kinnar and eunuchs".
"In spite of declaring transgender people to be a 'third gender' by this court, there is no provision/ section in the Indian Penal Code which may protect the third gender from the sexual assault by male/ female or another transgender," it said.
The PIL challenged the constitutional validity of certain clauses of Section 354A (outraging the modesty of a woman) of IPC, to the extent that they are interpreted to exclude victims of sexual harassment who are transgender persons, as being ultra vires Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution.
READ: PIL in SC seeks protection for transgenders from sexual assaults