LGBTQ rights activist Prasad Ramamurthy still recalls the ordeal that his German and Indian gay friends had to go through in a Colaba hotel four years ago.
The police banged on their door at midnight while they were sleeping under the pretext of carrying out a search due to a terror alert. They forced the Indian citizen to confess that his German partner had forced himself on him or else be ready to be charged under Article 377.
The German insisted that they were business partners and threatened to call the embassy. When none of this helped, the couple called Ramamurthy who then worked with a leading news channel. Prasad threatened to elevate the matter. The police finally released the three but only after extracting Rs 10,000 from them.
"The verdict has rendered legal teeth to the community," says Ramamurthy. "You have some legal recourse. You are no longer invisible to the law."
For Nikhil Kambli of Vile Parle, Mumbai, the Supreme Court verdict means he will be able to continue his work without harassment. The 23-year-old faced harassment from police even when he sought their help. "There are hot spots where members of our community meet and propose sex. As an outreach worker, I go there to distribute condoms," said Kambli.
During one such drive two years ago, some anti-social elements caught hold of Kambli and demanded he have sex with them. "They slapped me and hit me. I managed to break free and find a policeman at Andheri railway station.
He even caught hold of one of the persons who assaulted me. But when the case was to be filed at Andheri police station, the cops there harassed me," says Kambli.
Kambli said the cops blamed him for the advances. "They said I must have solicited them, or they may have caught me doing something and which is why I was troubled," he says. "They would call me often and ask me dirty, prodding questions such as whether I was made to perform oral sex or if the assailants touched my thigh. I went to the police station for a few days in the hope that they would take action, but that did not happen. Eventually I stopped."
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 "Prasad Ramamurthy-Nikhil Kambli")
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