Section 377, 3 years on: Walking down the aisle of history
Published on: 6 September 2021, 07:33 am
The first failure, the dismissal of the Naz petition in 2004 and the review petition arising out of it in the Delhi Hc on technical grounds, was a big let-down but not for long as the SC set aside the dismissal, writes ANAND GROVER.
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TODAY is the 3rd anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Navtej Johar, holding that sexual acts between consenting adults in private does not attract section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). It is also 20 years after the Naz Foundation challenged the constitutional validity of Section 377, which we won in 2009.
The long journey has been a roller coaster ride.
Beginning of struggle
Gay men starting to come to our (Lawyers Collective's) office after a major victory in an HIV case in 1997. The pain of their stories of blackmail by the police, their casual partners, parents etc., was an impetus to find a solution. That quest led us to locating section 377 as the source of evil. The constitutionality of section 377 had to be challenged.
The next step was getting the petition draft and settled and then trying to locate a petitioner. But no gay man, except Ashok Row Kavi, was willing to come forward to be a petitioner because of the extreme stigma.
However, the petition had to be filed in Delhi as the AIDS BhedBhev Virodhi Andolan (ABVA) had already filed a petition there and if filed in the Bombay high court, the government would have got both transferred to the Supreme Court, which might have dismissed it and sealed our fate for a long time. At this juncture, Anjali Gopalan from Naz Foundation came forward.
In the meantime, in 2001, there were arrests in Lucknow of the Bharosa Trust activists for reaching out to the gay community and making them aware of safe sex.