India: Supreme Court moves toward action on anti-LGBT law

 India’s Supreme Court has challenged the country’s ministries of health and justice to defend Section 377, the colonial-era law against consensual same-sex intimacy.

The court is considering two cases seeking to overturn that law.

The Times of India described the suit filed by LGBT activist Arif Jafar, who was arrested in connection with distribution of condoms in order to combat HIV infection among men who have sex with men:

Jafar claimed in his plea that he and his four colleagues, who were involved in an outreach and distribution of condoms among men having sex with men, were humiliated and beaten up in public before being arrested by the police under section 109 (punishment of abetment), section 120B (criminal conspiracy), section 292 (sale of obscene books) and section 377 (unnatural offence) of the IPC.

Jafar spent 47 days in jail before he was granted bail by the Allahabad High Court.

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“Section 377 IPC violates the fundamental right to privacy and does not meet the three-fold requirements laid down by this Court …, which may justify restraints on privacy. “In particular, section 377 IPC fails to meet the second requirement, which is that of a valid law that serves a ‘legitimate aim’, or, in other words, a law that is not manifestly arbitrary. The only avowed objective of section 377 IPC is to prohibit sexual activity that is ‘against the order of nature’ – which, is ex facie arbitrary,” Jafar said in his plea.