It was the US Supreme Court’s assertion in 1965 that privacy was a fundamental right under the US Constitution that led to its landmark judgement eight years later upholding abortion rights in the famous Roe vs Wade case.
Five decades later, India could find itself following the same path. By invoking the fundamental right to privacy, which the Indian Supreme Court categorically stated last year was implicit in the right to life guaranteed under the Constitution, India could end up decriminalising homosexuality.
The gates for this were opened on Monday, when a bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra admitted a petition challenging the colonial-era Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that provides for a maximum punishment of life imprisonment for what it describes as “unnatural sex”. It referred the matter to a Constitution bench.