Delhi High Court legalises homosexuality

In a historic judgement, the Delhi High Court Thursday decriminalised homosexuality by striking down section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).A bench of Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice S. Muralidhar said that if not amended, section 377 of the IPC would violate Article 21 of the Indian constitution, which states that every citizen has equal opportunity of life and is equal before law.


"This British colonial legacy has done untold harm to generations of individuals in India and across the Commonwealth," Amnesty International said.

Thursday's ruling overturned the 19th century British colonial law, Section 377, which banned engagement in consensual gay sex as "carnal intercourse against the order of nature".

"The law had been used to stifle the work of organisations working on HIV/AIDS prevention in India," Amnesty said.

India is home to some 2.3 million people with HIV, an epidemic that is primarily fuelled by unsafe sex between men and women.

In highlighting the HIV/AIDS implications of the ruling, Amnesty joined the ranks of many international and Indian health organisations that have campaigned for decades for Indian authorities to repeal the colonial-era law.

With India having no laws specifically criminalising child sex abuse, the court's ruling opens up another window as it now restricts section 377 to cases of rape and child abuse.

Amnesty urged Indian lawmakers to rewrite the law to deal explicitly with those crimes.

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