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Image Credit: twitter.com/arundhatikatju

Lawyers Menaka Guruswamy, Arundhati Katju who fought for Section 377 confess they are a lesbian couple

| @indiablooms | Jul 21, 2019, at 12:50 am

New Delhi, July 21 (IBNS): Lawyers Menaka Guruswamy and Arundhati Katju, who fought and won the battle to make homosexuality as legal in India, have recently confessed to international media about their relationship.

In a recent interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, the couple admitted that they were a couple and the battle in the courtroom last year was also a personal one.

When asked whether the case was much more personal to them or not, both Guruswamy and Katju had agreed.

"Ya, that's right. The loss in 2013 was a loss as lawyers and loss of citizens. It was a personal loss. It was not nice to be a criminal to go back to court as a lawyer to argue other cases. It was a deeply personal loss. I think our governments has to have a sense that these are not our laws, these were never our cultures and why we have been not proactive in bringing forth a law reform in expanding freedom. Surely independence and de-colonisation must mean that," Guruswamy said. 

In a historic judgement that can be called a milestone in the movement for gay rights in India, the Supreme Court in September last year ruled that homosexuality is not a crime in the country anymore with the top court moving to scrap Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a British era law that treated the practice as unnatural. 

A five-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra delivered its verdict on whether Section 377 that holds gay sex as an offence in India, ruling that homosexuality is not an offence.

All judges concurred on their opinions and their viewpoint was 'take me as I am' and that prejudice cannot rule India. Outside the court and across the nation people celebrated.

In 2013, the top court had upheld gay-sex as an offence though this section was read down  by the Delhi High Court in July 2009 in response to a Naz Foundation petition in the Delhi High Court against Section 377.

That judgement was overturned by the Supreme Court  on Dec  11, 2013  holding that amending or repealing section 377 should be a matter left to Parliament, not the judiciary.

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