Bengaluru: Transgenders in the city are complaining that police were forcing them to leave the city. The police are making life unliveable for transgenders by persuading landlords to evict them as tenants, claim transgender activists.
In the aftermath of a TV channel reporting the alleged kidnap and castration of a teenaged boy, Bengaluru police have now taken repressive steps against local transgenders, including demanding that they provide details of deaths of children in the community, so that bodies could be exhumed.
According to Soumya, a member of the transgender community, “Ever since the incident was reported on September 25, innocent members of our community are being targeted.”
Soumya said that all the years of hard work that the transgender community put in to gain acceptance is now being eroded, “Since the year 1990 there has been some kind of acceptance from parents of transgenders. Now even parents look at us with suspicion and ask if we had castrated or forced someone to become a transgender.”
Soumya added that police repression had become worse since the incident, “You cannot blame a whole community because of a few bad apples. There are many among us who want to make an honest living. Cops suddenly turn up at our doorstep and take us in for enquiry. Many of us live in extreme fear. Besides that house owners who had given their houses on rent to transgenders are now forcing them to move out.”
Veena, another member of the transgender community said, “The incident was telecast on a local channel and that has totally soured relations between the society and the TG community. Can you believe that people on the road stop and ask us if we forced people to become transgenders? It is very humiliating for us.”
Veena added that health programmes among the trangender community had taken a big hit, “Imagine living with all this humiliation. Most of the members of the transgender community take to begging and sex work as they find it hard to get a mainstream job. HIV/AIDS programmes to educate them are being affected as most transgenders are going underground to avoid police and societal persecution.”
Akkai Padmashali of Ondede, an organisation spearheading the fight for transgender rights, said, “The transgender community is being unfairly targeted. There is a huge gap in trust at the moment.”
