India’s top court reviews homosexuality ban

NEW DELHI: India’s top court began reviewing on Tuesday 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.

A ruling was not expected imminently, with Tripti Tandon, a lawyer for one of the petitioners in the case, saying the hearing would last "two weeks if not more". Her client, Aris Jafer, was arrested and sent to prison for 50 days in 2001.

Manvendra Singh Gohil, an openly gay Indian prince who is an ambassador for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation charity, said on Tuesday he hoped the "draconian" law would be changed.