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Article 377, archaic law imposed during British rule that penalizes sex "against the order of nature", is punishable by a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Five judges of the Supreme Court will decide to repeal the law, after weeks of extensive deliberation in New Delhi.
For lawyers representing more than a dozen gay and lesbian Indians who have filed an application in court, the legal acceptance of same-sex relationships could finally put an end to the harassment and harassment. the persecution of the LGBT community.
Although the law is rarely enforced, it has helped create a culture of fear and repression within the LGBT community, activists say. A change in legislation "would create a space of freedom where you can begin to wait for justice," CNN Dan Sheikh, a law professor at Jindal Global Law School and LGBT advocate, told CNN.
Long battle
Thursday's decision is the culmination of a long legal battle for equality in a country where homosexuality is often neither understood nor accepted.
In its judgment, the Supreme Court stated that only "a tiny fraction of the country's population is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender" and therefore "legally unsustainable".
During the current hearings, counsel questioned the constitutional basis of this earlier decision.
"It was a wrong judgment, it was not legal and it was wrongly based on the principles of the constitution," said Colin Gonsalves, one of the lawyers representing the current group of petitioners , in July.
The landmark decision, which stated that sexual orientation was an essential attribute of privacy and that discrimination against an individual based on sexual orientation was illegal, galvanized the militants.
"Last year's decision overturned the 2013 ruling," said Gonsalves. "There is no problem now, there is not much left to discuss," he added.
Dehumanizing colonial law
According to Lucas Mendos, co-author of the 2017 report of the LGBTI International Association on Homophobia sponsored by the state, of the 49 former British colonies that criminalize homosexuality, 31 still have some laws based on the original anti-LGBT colonial legislation.
Of these, nine still have original British laws in place more or less unchanged, including India.
Arif Jafar, one of the petitioners' groups heard by the Supreme Court, was arrested in 2001 under article 377 and spent 49 days in prison.
Jafar now runs an informal support group in the state of Uttar Pradesh, in the north of the country. The group, named "Trust", provides counseling, support and sexual health services to gay and transgender people.
In his motion, Jafar describes the experience as dehumanizing and violating his fundamental rights. He also claimed to have been beaten and humiliated every day because of his sexuality.
Many of those who campaign in India against Article 377 point out that it does not only trap Indian LGBT people in a closet, but that it invites other forms of discrimination. , providing coverage for blackmail and harassment.
The law, which was introduced for the first time by the British colonizers in the 1860s, was in part the product of a strict Victorian moral code, born of a Christian faith that defined the activity sexual as a taboo.
But attitudes have changed, said Danish Sheikh, the law professor, who has worked on court challenges prior to section 377.
"After 2013, there was a lot of energetic activism in the country.The kind of outrage that was felt resonated in civil society, outside the LGBT community," Sheikh said.
"People have started to see themselves as legal subjects and society has begun to tolerate and even accept queer people."
Swati Gupta from CNN contributed to this report.
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