Eight booked for assault and abduction of transgender person

The Srirampura police have registered a case against eight transgender persons for allegedly abducting, torturing, and humiliating a 22-year-old transgender person for refusing to repay money they had spent on the latter’s gender-affirming surgery. The accused allegedly shaved the victim’s head and assaulted the victim brutally, police said.

The FIR was registered under Sections 119 (Voluntarily Causing Hurt/Grievous Hurt to Extort Property or Constrain to an Illegal Act), 127 (wrongful confinement), 190 ( unlawful assembly), 351 ( criminal intimidation), and 352 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) on Sunday.

According to the complaint, the victim, identified as Jaromia, underwent gender-affirming surgery in November last year and had borrowed ₹1.5 lakh as a loan for the ritual required to join the transgender community. Soon after, the accused allegedly began forcing her to beg and repay the EMI.

The victim stated that she needed time to recover from the surgery, but the accused allegedly began torturing her from the second day after the surgery, demanding that she arrange ₹10,000 per day. Unable to bear the harassment and abuse, Jaromia escaped and took shelter at a friend’s house.

Police said that on Saturday, the accused allegedly called the victim near NIMHANS on the pretext of signing documents to apply for another loan. When she reached the spot, she was allegedly forced into an autorickshaw, taken to a house at Kudlu Gate, and assaulted before locking her inside a room. The victim managed to escape while the accused were asleep and, with the help of a friend, got herself admitted to a hospital, where she is undergoing treatment.

The victim has alleged that the accused robbed her of a 10-gm gold chain during the assault.