NEW DELHI, Oct 12:
The Supreme Court Monday sought the Centre’s reply on a PIL seeking equal protection in law to transgender people on the grounds that there was no penal provision which protects them from offences of sexual assault.
A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde said that it was a “good case” which needed hearing.
The bench, also comprising Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, asked senior advocate Vikas Singh, representing petitioner lawyer Reepak Kansal, to file details of cases where the court had passed orders in the the absence of laws to deal with issues.
In a hearing conducted via video conferencing, the bench referred to the framing of the Vishaka guidelines to deal with sexual harassment of women at work places and the decriminalization of consensual gay sex by the apex court in the absence of laws.
Singh said he would be filing such details as asked by the court.
The plea, which has made the ministries of law and justice, and social justice and empowerment as parties, has referred to the provisions of the IPC of 1860 as also to the recent amendments to the statute and other laws on sexual offences and alleged that none of them talked about the “transgender, transsexuals, kinnar and eunuchs”.
“In spite of declaring transgender people to be a ‘third gender’ by this court, there is no provision/ section in the Indian Penal Code which may protect the third gender from the sexual assault by male/ female or another transgender,” it said.
The PIL challenged the constitutional validity of certain clauses of Section 354A (outraging the modesty of woman) of IPC, to the extent that they are interpreted to exclude victims of sexual harassment who are transgender persons, as being ultra vires Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution.
Lawyer Kansal, who filed the PIL in personal capacity, said that though the apex court in 2014, had granted “recognition to the transgender/ third gender as ‘persons’ falling under the ambit of Article 14 of the Indian Constitution”, still they do not have equal protection of law in relation to sexual offenses. (PTI)
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