India's gay community has been fighting to get a ban on homosexual sex overturned ever since the Supreme Court reinstated a decades-old law in late 2013. (File photo)
A new petition challenging a colonial era ban on gay sex will be heard by the Chief Justice of India, the Supreme Court said today.
A number of celebrities from the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bixexual and Transgender) community had argued that Section 377 of India's penal code, which prohibits "carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal", undermined their fundamental rights by failing to protect their sexual preferences.
"The Supreme Court refused to hear the matter and asked the petitioners to approach the Chief Justice of India," Arvind Dattar, a lawyer for one of the petitioners, was quoted by Reuters as saying.
Chief Justice TS Thakur is already hearing a separate case to strike down the ban. A curative petition has challenged the Supreme Court's previous ruling that only Parliament has the power to change Section 377.
India's gay community has been fighting to get a ban on homosexual sex overturned ever since the Supreme Court reinstated a decades-old law in late 2013.
That ban ended a four-year period of decriminalisation that had helped bring homosexuality increasingly out into the open in a deeply conservative society.
Discrimination faced by homosexual communities across the world was thrown into sharp relief again this month after a gunman slaughtered 49 people at a gay nightclub in Florida.
Some Western countries have pressured India to overturn its ban on gay sex and respect human rights regardless of sexual orientation.
This month US Ambassador Richard Verma's residence in New Delhi's leafy diplomatic quarter was lit in the colours of the rainbow in a gesture of solidarity towards victims of the Orlando massacre.
Violation of the Indian law on gay sex can result in a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
© Thomson Reuters 2016