Sex between consenting homosexual partners is once again illegal in India after the country's Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling on Wednesday.
Four years ago, India's High Court decriminalized such a relationship, in what was then hailed by gay rights groups as a landmark ruling. The Supreme Court overturned that ruling.
Known as Section 377, the law has been in the books since India's Colonial-era days. It bans people from engaging in "carnal acts against the order of nature." On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that the penal code was constitutionally valid.
It was up to parliament, the court said, to decide whether or not to keep the law in the statute books.
The move shocked rights activists around the world, who had expected the court simply to rubber-stamp the earlier ruling. In recent years, India's Supreme Court has made progressive rulings on several issues such as prisoners' rights and child labor.
"It's a black day for us," said Anjali Gopalan, the executive director of the Naz Foundation, a Delhi-based NGO that works on sexual health and led the consortium of advocacy groups defending the 2009 judgment.
"I feel exhausted right now, thinking that we have been set back by 100 years."
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