A five-member Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court will go into the validity of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, under which homosexual activity and other forms of unnatural sex are a crime punishable with imprisonment for life or less.
A three-member Bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur accepted the plea for sending the issue to a larger Bench after senior advocate Kapil Sibal pleaded that the December 11, 2013 SC ruling re-criminalising gay sex ran counter to an apex court Constitution Bench judgment holding that right to sex was the “most private and most precious” part of life.
Sibal contended that deciding the validity of Section 377 involved interpretation of various constitutional provisions dealing with people’s fundamental rights and the issue should be gone into by a larger Bench.
