New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday issued notice to the Centre seeking its reply on a plea by a group of 20 former and current students of the prestigious IITs challenging section 377 of the IPC, which criminalises unnatural sex between two consenting adults of the same gender.
A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud, while seeking response from the government, ordered tagging of the plea with other similar petitions which have already been referred by the top court to a five-judge constitution bench on January 8.
The 20 IITians, including scientists, teachers, entrepreneurs and researchers of different age groups, who all are LGBT, have claimed that criminalisation of sexual orientation has resulted in a “sense of shame, loss of self-esteem and stigma”.
