The Supreme Court of India is the supreme judicial authority and the highest court of the Republic of India. It is the final court of appeal for all civil and criminal cases in India. It also has the power of judicial review. The Supreme Court, which consists of the Chief Justice of India and a maximum of fellow 33 judges, has extensive powers in the form of original, appellate and advisory jurisdictions.
Section 377 is a British colonial penal code that criminalized all sexual acts "against the order of nature". The law was used to prosecute people engaging in oral and anal sex along with homosexual activity. As per a Supreme Court Judgement since 2018, the Indian Penal Code Section 377 is used to convict non-consensual sexual activities among homosexuals with a minimum of ten years’ imprisonment extended to life imprisonment. It has been used to criminalize third gender people, such as the apwint in Myanmar. In 2018, then British Prime Minister Theresa May acknowledged how the legacies of such British colonial anti-sodomy laws continue to persist today in the form of discrimination, violence, and even death.
Konakuppakatil Gopinathan Balakrishnan is an Indian judge who served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India and later the chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission of India. He was the first judge from Kerala to become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. His tenure lasting more than three years has been one of the longest in the Supreme Court of India. While being Chief Justice of Gujarat High Court, he was appointed the acting governor of Gujarat from 16 January 1999 to 18 March 1999. In 2010, he was conferred with an honorary doctorate by Cochin University of Science and Technology.
Ranganath Misra was the 21st Chief Justice of India, serving from 25 September 1990 to 24 November 1991. He was also the first chairman of the National Human Rights Commission of India. He also served as Member of Parliament in Rajya Sabha from the Congress Party between 1998 and 2004. He is the second Supreme court judge to become a Rajya Sabha member after Baharul Islam who was also elected as Indian National Congress member.
Sarosh Homi Kapadia was the 38th Chief Justice of India. He was the first chief justice born after the partition of India.
Jasti Chelameswar is a former judge of the Supreme Court of India. He retired on 22 June 2018 as the second most senior supreme court judge. He previously served as the chief justice of the Kerala High Court from 2010 to 2011 and the Gauhati High Court from 2007 to 2010. He was also one of the four judges who held a controversial press conference against Chief Justice Dipak Misra.
Jagdish Singh Khehar is a former senior advocate and a former judge, who served as the 44th Chief Justice of India in 2017. Khehar is the first chief justice from the Sikh community. He has been a judge in Supreme Court of India from 13 September 2011 to 27 August 2017 upon superannuation. He served for a brief period but gave many landmark judgements such as the Triple Talaq and the Right to Privacy verdict. He was succeeded by Justice Dipak Misra.
Ranjan Gogoi is an Indian former advocate and judge who served as the 46th Chief Justice of India from 2018 to 2019, having previously served as a Judge of the Supreme Court of India from 2012 to 2018. He is currently a Member of the Rajya Sabha, having been nominated by President Ram Nath Kovind on 16 March 2020. Gogoi served as a judge in the Gauhati High Court from 2001 to 2010, and then was transferred as a judge to the Punjab and Haryana High Court from 2010 to 2011 where he later was the Chief Justice from 2011 to 2012. He is also a member of the Committee on External Affairs in the Rajya Sabha.
Amitava Roy is the retired judge of the Supreme Court of India and former Chief Justice of the Odisha High Court and Rajasthan High Court. He is also a puisne judge of the Gauhati High Court.
Kuttiyil Mathew Joseph is a former judge of the Supreme Court of India; he retired on 16 June 2023. He is former chief justice of the Uttarakhand High Court. Before his appointment as chief justice of the High Court of Uttarakhand on 31 July 2014, he had served as a judge of the Kerala High Court for more than nine years.
Sidharth Luthra is a senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India. In July 2012, Sidharth Luthra was appointed as the Additional Solicitor General of India at the Supreme Court and represented the union and various state governments in matters relating to fundamental rights, electoral reforms, criminal law and policy issues. He resigned from this position in May 2014. He is the son of K.K. Luthra who was also a senior advocate and brother of senior advocate Geeta Luthra.
Palanisamy Sathasivam is an Indian judge who served as the 40th Chief Justice of India, holding the office from 2013 to 2014. On retirement from his judicial career, Sathasivam was appointed the 21st Governor of Kerala from 5 September 2014 to 4 September 2019. Sathasivam is the second judge from Tamil Nadu to become the CJI, after M. Patanjali Sastri. He is also the first former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to be appointed the Governor of a state. He is the first Governor of Kerala to be appointed by the Narendra Modi Government.
Sharad Arvind Bobde is an Indian judge who served as the 47th Chief Justice of India from 18 November 2019 to 23 April 2021.
Prafulla Chandra Pant is an Indian judge and author who served as a judge of the Supreme Court of India from 2014 to 2017. He later served as a member of the National Human Rights Commission of India from 2019 to 2021, and briefly acted as its chairperson. Prior to his appointment as a judge of the Supreme Court of India, he had previously served as chief justice of the Meghalaya High Court at Shillong and as a judge of the Uttarakhand High Court at Nainital.
Uday Umesh Lalit is an Indian lawyer and former Supreme Court Judge, who served as the 49th Chief Justice of India. Previously, he has served as a judge of Supreme Court of India. Prior to his elevation as a judge, he practised as a senior counsel at the Supreme Court. Justice Lalit is one of the eleven senior counsels who have been directly elevated to the Supreme Court. He is currently ‘Distinguished Visiting Professor’ at Ashank Desai Centre for Policy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Distinguished Visiting Professor at West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences.
Brijgopal Harkishan Loya was an Indian judge who served in a special court which deals with matters relating to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). He was presiding over the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case, and died on 1 December 2014 in Nagpur. A bench of the Supreme Court of India, headed by the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, on April 19, 2018, dismissed the public interest petition (PIL), and stated the death to be natural and such petitions to be an attack on the Judiciary.
The Supreme Court of India was in crisis after a press conference was given by Supreme Court judges Jasti Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan Lokur, and Kurian Joseph, in which they spoke against the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra that he allocated certain politically controversial cases to such benches which give favourable judgements towards a political party.
Narayan Shukla (born 18 July 1958) also known as SN Shukla was an Allahabad High Court Judge. The Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra has written to the President of India recommending his removal for his alleged involvement in the medical college admission scam.
Navtej Singh Johar &Ors. v. Union of India thr. Secretary Ministry of Law and Justice (2018) is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of India that decriminalised all consensual sex among adults, including homosexual sex.
Ujjawal &Anr. versus State of Haryana&Ors.(2021), a case where Punjab and Haryana High Court, refused to provide police protection to a couple facing threat to their lives and personal liberty, citing potential disruption to "social fabric of the society."
