Section 377: Supreme Court set to give ruling on plea to legalise gay sex

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court (SC) will pronounce its verdict on pleas challenging the validity of section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) on Thursday.The SC would decide whether the Section 377 criminalising consensual gay sex is valid or not.The apex court had on July 17 reserved its verdict on whether to decriminalise Section 377 or not.The Centre had earlier put the onus of deciding the fate of Section 377 on the SC. And the apex court, on its part, had given a strong indication that it planned to go ahead and scrap the section that criminalises homosexuality The top court had said the social stigma and discrimination attached to the community would go if criminality of consensual gay sex is done away with, even as it maintained that it would scrutinise the legal validity of Section 377 of the IPC in all its aspects.In 2009, the Delhi high court had ruled in favour of decriminalising section 377, only to be reversed by a two-judge SC bench in 2013 in the Suresh Kumar Koushal vs Naz Foundation case.In May, the apex court had decided to hear the plea filed by Indian Institute of Technology's LGBT alumni association seeking scrapping of Section 377 of the IPC.Earlier, on April 27, Ashok Rao Kavi of Humsafar Trust and Arif Jaffar also filed petitions against Section 377.Section 377 refers to 'unnatural offences' and says whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to 10 years, and shall also be liable to pay a fine.