New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday said the curative pleas challenging the 2013 judgment, which re-criminalised consensual gay sex in private, have become “infructuous” against the backdrop of the 2018 verdict, which decriminalised the act.
A five-judge bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and comprising justices BR Gavai, Bela M Trivedi, Pankaj Mithal, and Manoj Misra said the subsequent judgment in the Navtej Singh Jauhar case by which consensual gay sex was decriminalised has made these curative petitions infructuous. “We will say this curative petition became infructuous in view of the constitution bench judgment, we rendered in Navtej Johar,” said the bench.
In 2013, a two-judge bench of the apex court overruled a 2009 Delhi High Court judgment, which decriminalised consensual gay sex in private. The review pleas against the 2013 judgment were also dismissed, which led to the filing of the curative petitions in 2014.
On September 6, 2018, a five-judge constitution bench unanimously decriminalised a part of Section 377 of the IPC, which criminalises consensual unnatural sex. The apex court had said that it violated the right to equality. The petitions were filed by Navtej Singh Jauhar and others. In 2001, the NGO Naaz Foundation filed a PIL in the Delhi High Court seeking the legalisation of gay sex among consenting adults, which was dismissed.
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