SOME RECENT SOCIAL INTERVENTIONS BY THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA

Ordered a blanket ban on publication of images including blurred images, of minor victims of sexual offenses. It also directed the State of Bihar to take appropriate action against the holder of the Facebook account that divulged details of the victims after the wife of an accused took to Facebook to publish a post listing names of several of the victims of Muzzafarpur case in an attempt to defend her accused husband.

Refused to grant anticipatory bail to two of the four accused priests in the Kerala Church Sex Scandal, asking the accused to surrender by August 13 and seek regular bail. The Court heard how an accused priest had used a video to blackmail the victims via social media to keep them from cooperating in the investigation.

Decided to reconsider its 2013 judgment in Suresh Kumar Koushal, in which it had upheld the constitutionality of Section 377 of the Indian

Penal Code, which criminalises homosexuality.

Ruled that the daughters who were born before the 2005 amendment of Hindu Succession Act, 1956 would also be entitled to equal shares as a son in ancestral property.

Ruled that matters of dress and of food, of ideas and ideologies, of love and partnership are within the central aspects of ‘identity’. “The law may regulate (subject to constitutional compliance) the conditions of a valid marriage, as it may regulate the situations in which a marital tie can be ended or annulled. These remedies are available to parties to a marriage for it is they who decide best on whether they should accept each other into a marital tie or continue in that relationship. Society has no role to play in determining our choice of partners,” the apex court observed, overruling the Kerala High Court in the Hadiya marriage case.