The Supreme Court will pronounce its verdicts on two key issues on Thursday. While one will decide the course of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute, the other verdict will determine the constitutional validity of the penal law on adultery.
The Ayodhya case up for verdict on Thursday is on a batch of pleas by Muslim groups on the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute seeking reconsideration by a larger bench, the observations made by it in a 1994 verdict that a mosque was not integral to Islam.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices Ashok Bhushan and S. Abdul Nazeer, which had reserved it on July 20, will pronounce the verdict.
M. Siddiq, one of the original litigants of the Ayodhya case who has died and is being represented through his legal heir, had assailed certain findings of the 1994 verdict in the case of M. Ismail Faruqui holding that a mosque was not integral to the prayers offered by the followers of Islam.
It was argued by the Muslim groups before a special bench of CJI Misra and Justices Bhushan and Nazeer that the "sweeping" observation of the apex court in the verdict needed to be reconsidered by a five-judge bench as "it had and will have a bearing" on the Babri Masjid-Ram Temple land dispute case.
Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for legal representative of Siddiq, had said that the observation that mosques were not essential for practising Islam were made by the apex court without any enquiry or considering the religious texts.
The Uttar Pradesh government had earlier told the top court that some Muslim groups were trying to delay the hearing in the "long-pending" Ayodhya temple-mosque land dispute case by seeking reconsideration of the observation in the 1994 verdict that a mosque was not integral to Islam.
Adultery case
The verdict on the adultery case will be delivered by a five-judge constitution bench headed by CJI Misra that had on August 8 reserved its verdict after Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, appearing for the Centre, concluded her arguments.
The hearing in the case by the bench, which also comprised justices R.F. Nariman, A.M. Khanwilkar, D.Y. Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra, went on for six days and had commenced on August 1.
The Centre had favoured retention of penal law on adultery, saying that it is a public wrong which causes mental and physical injury to the spouse, children and the family.
"It is an action willingly and knowingly done with the knowledge that it would hurt the spouse, the children and the family. Such intentional action which impinges on the sanctity of marriage and sexual fidelity encompassed in marriage, which forms the backbone of the Indian society, has been classified and defined by the Indian State as a criminal offence in exercise of its Constitution powers," the Centre had said.
Section 497 of the 158-year-old Indian Penal Code says: "Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, is guilty of the offence of adultery."
On January 5, the apex court had referred to a five-judge Constitution bench the plea challenging the validity of the penal law on adultery.
The court had taken a prima facie view that though the criminal law proceeded on "gender neutrality", the concept was absent in Section 497.