Some of the petitioners who have filed a curative petition in the Supreme Court against its verdict on Section 377 have received a legal notice for having done so, asking why should ‘action not be taken for playing a fraud on the superior judiciary, the government and the people of the country for having filed a review and a curative petition’. The notice has been sent on behalf of Purushothaman Mulloli of Joint Action Council Kannur (JACK), which was one of the parties that had appealed in the Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court order of 2009 reading down Section 377.
The notice, which is replete with grammatical errors, seeks to question the petitioners for having an ‘agenda’ to implement in spite of a ‘blatant absence of evidence’ to support their claims, and goes on to conclude that the petitioners have hence committed an ‘offence of sedition’.
JACK, which used to be an NGO based out of Kerala, is currently concentrated only in Delhi and claims to work in the field of HIV-AIDS. It has long been a vocal opponent of homosexuality, with Mulloli claiming at various times that legalizing same sex relations would lead to prostitution, and a ‘break down of family values’. He has said that legalization would lead to creation of a sex industry, which is the ultimate aim of foreign-funded AIDS NGOs. His views on HIV-AIDS are also fantastic, to say the least. JACK has for long held that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, it is not transmitted sexually and that the existence of HIV is itself in doubt. It claims that statistics on the number of AIDS affected in India are ‘exaggerated’ , claiming that this is part of a nefarious design by MNCs to control public health policy in India under the guise of AIDS outreach. Mulloli has also been quoted as saying that the National Aids Control Organization (NACO) of India is an ‘anti-national’ organization.
While the current notice by JACK seems primarily a pressure tactic, the petitioners are weighing legal options on a response to it.