Former chief justice of Delhi high court A.P.
Former chief justice of Delhi high court A.P. Shah, who decriminalised homosexuality, on Saturday said the Supreme Court made a “mistake” by overturning his verdict and the political climate now favours a re-thinking on the controversial colonial penal provision.
The judge, who wrote the judgment for the bench also comprising Justice S. Muralidhar, was critical of the Supreme Court verdict saying it made a “mistake” and failed to correct in the review petition and now has an opportunity to rectify it in the pending curative petition to decriminalise section 377 of IPC, which prohibits consensual sexual intercourse between same sex people.
He said that with a single stroke of pen the apex court “criminalised the existence of a class of people who are now condemned to live in shadow of fear”. “Today, the Supreme Court has the opportunity (while hearing curative petition) to correct the mistake it made... and redeem its glorious status as protector of fundamental rights,” he said
Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley and Congress’ P. Chidambaram, both of them leading lawyers, had recently criticised the apex court verdict retaining section 377 of IPC a criminal offence.
