SC to begin hearing on plea favouring euthanasia today

Abench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud made a decision to refer the matter to a five-judge constitution bench and said the recent judgment rendering triple talaq as unconstitutional could have a bearing on this issue.

A Special Leave Petition (SLP) had been filed in the Supreme Court challenging the Gujarat High Court's controversial ruling that a woman who enters into wedlock outside her religion is deemed to have changed her religion to that of her husband, thereby losing the right to practice her own religion. In 1991, the petitioner, whose last name was Contractor, married a Hindu man named Mahipal Gupta in Valsad in south Gujarat.

Senior lawyer Indira Jaising, appearing for Goolrokh M Gupta, said "the doctrine of custom" that a woman automatically assumes the religion of her husband, no more held good.

The Delhi High Court Monday granted the government a last opportunity by giving it six months to look into the accounts of political parties, including the Congress and the BJP, for traces of foreign funds.

Goolrokh has moved the Supreme Court against this judgment. The HC on March 23, 2012 had said a woman born as a Parsi and initiated into the Zoroastrian religion by her Zoroastrian parents, loses her Zoroastrian religion by virtue of her marriage to a non-Zoroastrian, Hindu male. "The Special Marriage Act allows people to marry without converting", she added. The court will consider the plea of an NGO, Common Cause, to declare "right to die with dignity" as a fundamental right within the fold of Right to Live with Dignity guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution.

"The feudal concept that a woman loses her legal identity on marriage, and it merges with the identity of her husband, is no longer acceptable today".

The counsel for the respondent submitted that the high court did not deny her permission to go and attend the funeral.