What is the Right to Life and Liberty? How has this Right evolved through the history of the Indian Constitution? (part 3)

Expansion of Right to Life and Personal Liberty

Post the Maneka Gandhi judgment, the Supreme Court, in various judgments, read the right to life and personal liberty to include other rights respecting dignity and bodily integrity, liberty and fair process, autonomy and identity, etc. The Court has, in some cases, devised Guidelines that have the effect of law until the government legislates on them. The government has also legislated on some of these rights (as indicated below).

• Right to speedy trial
• Right of prisoners to a healthy life in prisons
• Right to free legal aid
• Hand-cuffing of prisoners is detrimental to human dignity, unless extraordinary reasons exist.
• Right to livelihood: eviction of hawkers without alternative arrangements violates the right to life.
• Right to a safe workplace for women free from sexual harassment (Prevention of Sexual Harassment Act, 2013 passed)
• Right of adults to choose their life partners without interference from family or State
• Right to privacy (Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act 2023 passed)
• Decriminalisation of adultery (Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code stands deleted)
• Decriminalisation of homosexuality (Section 377 partially struck off the Indian Penal Code)
• Recognition of transgender persons as a third gender with the right to self-identification (Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 passed)
• Right to health including mental health (Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 passed)
• Right to make reproductive choice is an element of privacy, dignity and bodily integrity and State cannot usurp a pregnant woman’s autonomy
• Right to die with dignity (passive euthanasia) (Some States like Karnataka, Maharashtra have followed up with policies based on Supreme Court Guidelines)
• Right to Clean environment
• Right to Education (Constitution amended to include in Article 21A)
• Right to walk on safe footpaths

Case: Navtej Singh Johar v Union of India (2018) (Decriminalisation of Homosexuality). Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code criminalised consensual, private, homosexual acts between adults. The Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the portion of Section 377 which related to consenting adults. The Supreme Court found that the colonial-era law violated Article 14 (Equality before the law), Article 15 (non-discrimination) and Article 21 (Right to Life and Privacy) by criminalising people based on their sexual orientation.

Case: Joseph Shine v Union of India (2018) (Decriminalisation of Adultery). Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code (also known as the Adultery Law) criminalised a man for having sexual relations with a married woman without her husband’s consent, in effect treating the woman as the husband’s property. The woman committing adultery was not penalised, nor was it a crime for a married man to be in a sexual relationship with an unmarried woman. The law did not similarly allow married women to complain against their adulterous husbands. The Supreme Court struck down Section 497 as unconstitutional. The Court found the provision patriarchal and discriminatory against both men (by criminalising a certain kind of sexual relationship) and women (by not allowing them autonomy over their bodies). Section 497 was therefore found to violate Article 14 (Equality before the law), Article 15 (prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex), and Article 21 (right to privacy and dignity).

Case: Common Cause v. Union of India (2018); Harish Rana v. Union of India (2026) (Right to die with dignity). The Supreme Court ruled that the right to die with dignity is a fundamental right under Article 21. Court legalised passive euthanasia - withdrawing medical treatment for terminally ill patients if such treatment artificially prolongs life - with the approval of authorised Medical Boards. Court recognised Advance Medical Directives (Living Wills), which persons can register in advance to instruct what medical treatments they want or don’t want in case they become terminally ill or are not in a position to give consent for passive euthanasia. Active euthanasia, which requires administering a lethal medication by a doctor to hasten death and is done only on the request of the patient to relieve pain and suffering, is illegal in India. However, it is legal in some other countries.