Colin Stewart is a 45-year journalism veteran living in Southern…
Bangalore radio personality Disha Oberoi interviewed the wife whose accusations landed her husband in jail. (Click the image for the audio link. The interview begins at about the 3:20 mark.)
Indian Man Arrested For Homosexuality After Being Filmed On Wife’s Spy Cameras
Police in the Indian technology hub Bangalore have arrested a 32-year-old man for homosexuality after his wife installed secret cameras in their house and recorded him having sex with another man.
This may be the first case of someone arrested for consensual sex under India’s law [Section 377] criminalizing “sex against the order of nature” since it was reinstated by India’s Supreme Court in December.
The wife said in a statement filed with police on October 20 obtained by BuzzFeed News that she decided to install secret cameras because, after one year of marriage, “there is no sexual contact between me and my husband.” She said she had been “suffering thinking that my life was ruined,” and called for the police to “take legal action against my homosexual husband.” …
The colonial-era anti-gay law Section 377 was suspended by the High Court in Delhi in 2009, but reinstated by India’s Supreme Court in December 2013. In April 2014, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments on whether to reconsider the reinstatement decision, but nothing has yet come of that ruling.6
Justice S.J. Mukhopadhaya (Photo courtesy of SupremeCourtCaseLaw.com)
Danish Sheikh, a lawyer with the Bangalore-based Alternative Law Forum — which worked on the challenge to 377 and is offering legal support to the arrested [husband] — said that this arrest challenges some of the logic used by the judges to uphold 377. During arguments on the provision, Sheikh said in an email, Justice Sudhansu Jyoti Mukhopadhaya implied that the law would never result in prosecutions of private, consensual sex because “If something is [done] in private, who knows?”
“The Supreme Court in its deliberations felt that the dangers of Section 377 existed only through blackmail and extortion,” Sheikh said. “What is particularly significant in [this] case is the blatant scale of intrusion of privacy which has allowed for prosecution under 377 to take place.”
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