The rot was insult to the sweet cheap perfume. The two jostled to assail the olfactory senses, and succeeded from a distance. Policemen raised the body from the field in Mathra and carted it into a Suzuki pick-up. Crimson-black cuts in what had been a neck rode up against the pinky red clothes.
“Hijra de!” shouted a constable. It’s a hijra! His declaration came as permission to breathe normally again, unstilling the air that had gotten stuck in time.
“Shukar de che khaza na da,” someone said from the crowd of about 30 men. What a relief it’s not a woman.
The body was driven to the morgue at Khyber Medical University. “Name: Hajira,” said the medical report, its writing spilling off the paper. “Stabbed six times in the stomach. Throat slit in three places.” The medical officer dated it October 21.
No one came to own her. Even the transgendered people union was divided. Who wanted to be associated with a murder? The medical officers at the morgue flatly declined to put her in the freezer. A cold, indifferent Hajira waited on a stretcher while men argued above her as to why she could not be treated with the warmth this society reserves for gendered folk. Just as the heated debate settled inside, the sound of a protest rose up outside the morgue where transgendered people had gathered. TV tickers in curvy white fonts started to flash against red strips, as reporters emptied out their lungs on throbbing screens. The police contractor refused to bury the body.
In the end, an assistant sub-inspector who could not bear it, silently took her to a graveyard. Constables nattered near the police van of what a nuisance the transgendered people were.
Rape or death
“It’s difficult to maintain a balance between keeping yourself safe and entertaining a mob,” mused a senior police officer looking into the murder investigation the next day. “They are murdered for refusing to have sex most of the time. Those who survive are the ones who have surrendered to rape.”
Mere days after Hajira is murdered, another case surfaces. Men with guns intercept a van carrying transgendered people and “kidnap” one of them. The police rescue her after a few hours but it was too late. “She was raped multiple times,” said the officer who found her. “But she has declined to press charges because she thought it would create an unnecessary hassle and bring her a bad name in the community.” What will happen to the men who raped her?
“They’ll be released in a couple of days,” he says.
Meanwhile, Hajira is identified as Sherzada from Kot Gala village in Battagram, far from Peshawar. By this time, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department, shamed by newspaper stories, ekes out a clarification saying that her body had not been in a condition to be kept in the freezer, implying there had been no gender bias.
Hajira’s story starts to sound like the ones told about every other transgendered person: NOT ACCEPTED AT HOME – LEAVES HOME – GETS A GURU – STARTS DANCING – SEX WORK PAYS BETTER – ADOPTS THE PROFESSION.
The police manage to track the killers through the three cellular sims Hajira carried. Even her guru, Dil’lagi, is found. She tells the police that Hajira was seen with a young man named Farhan at a party but did not return that night. Once picked up, Farhan confesses in police custody to having consensual sex with her but then foisting multiple men on her. Investigating officer Liaquat Khan quotes from Farhan’s confessional statement: “We tried to rape her in a cornfield but she resisted.” The rest of the men could not take ‘no’ for an answer and murdered her. Farhan gives their names.
Arrests are made but the police are stumped when Hajira’s family says it won’t come in. “We had to pay the family, who live in abject poverty, to come and become party to the case,” said an officer. This was the first time the police had to do this to convince a family.
Hajira is just one of the 53 transgenders who men have murdered in the last two years in Pakistan, according to official records. These are the reported cases.
“Have you ever heard of a transgendered person killing a man during a party,” says one of Hajira’s friends, who did not want to be named. “Have we?”
“It’s always us who are stripped naked, beaten, raped and killed and yet it is us who are evil and filthy.”
There is a moment of silence and then she bursts into laughter: “Do you want me to believe in justice?”
The writer is a journalist covering KP and Fata
“Hijra de!” shouted a constable. It’s a hijra! His declaration came as permission to breathe normally again, unstilling the air that had gotten stuck in time.
“Shukar de che khaza na da,” someone said from the crowd of about 30 men. What a relief it’s not a woman.
The body was driven to the morgue at Khyber Medical University. “Name: Hajira,” said the medical report, its writing spilling off the paper. “Stabbed six times in the stomach. Throat slit in three places.” The medical officer dated it October 21.
No one came to own her. Even the transgendered people union was divided. Who wanted to be associated with a murder? The medical officers at the morgue flatly declined to put her in the freezer. A cold, indifferent Hajira waited on a stretcher while men argued above her as to why she could not be treated with the warmth this society reserves for gendered folk. Just as the heated debate settled inside, the sound of a protest rose up outside the morgue where transgendered people had gathered. TV tickers in curvy white fonts started to flash against red strips, as reporters emptied out their lungs on throbbing screens. The police contractor refused to bury the body.
In the end, an assistant sub-inspector who could not bear it, silently took her to a graveyard. Constables nattered near the police van of what a nuisance the transgendered people were.
Arrests are made but the police are stumped when Hajira's family says it won't come in. "We had to pay the family, who live in abject poverty, to come and become party to the case," said an officer. This was the first time the police had to do this to convince a family
Rape or death
“It’s difficult to maintain a balance between keeping yourself safe and entertaining a mob,” mused a senior police officer looking into the murder investigation the next day. “They are murdered for refusing to have sex most of the time. Those who survive are the ones who have surrendered to rape.”
Mere days after Hajira is murdered, another case surfaces. Men with guns intercept a van carrying transgendered people and “kidnap” one of them. The police rescue her after a few hours but it was too late. “She was raped multiple times,” said the officer who found her. “But she has declined to press charges because she thought it would create an unnecessary hassle and bring her a bad name in the community.” What will happen to the men who raped her?
“They’ll be released in a couple of days,” he says.
Meanwhile, Hajira is identified as Sherzada from Kot Gala village in Battagram, far from Peshawar. By this time, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department, shamed by newspaper stories, ekes out a clarification saying that her body had not been in a condition to be kept in the freezer, implying there had been no gender bias.
Hajira’s story starts to sound like the ones told about every other transgendered person: NOT ACCEPTED AT HOME – LEAVES HOME – GETS A GURU – STARTS DANCING – SEX WORK PAYS BETTER – ADOPTS THE PROFESSION.
The police manage to track the killers through the three cellular sims Hajira carried. Even her guru, Dil’lagi, is found. She tells the police that Hajira was seen with a young man named Farhan at a party but did not return that night. Once picked up, Farhan confesses in police custody to having consensual sex with her but then foisting multiple men on her. Investigating officer Liaquat Khan quotes from Farhan’s confessional statement: “We tried to rape her in a cornfield but she resisted.” The rest of the men could not take ‘no’ for an answer and murdered her. Farhan gives their names.
Arrests are made but the police are stumped when Hajira’s family says it won’t come in. “We had to pay the family, who live in abject poverty, to come and become party to the case,” said an officer. This was the first time the police had to do this to convince a family.
Hajira is just one of the 53 transgenders who men have murdered in the last two years in Pakistan, according to official records. These are the reported cases.
“Have you ever heard of a transgendered person killing a man during a party,” says one of Hajira’s friends, who did not want to be named. “Have we?”
“It’s always us who are stripped naked, beaten, raped and killed and yet it is us who are evil and filthy.”
There is a moment of silence and then she bursts into laughter: “Do you want me to believe in justice?”
The writer is a journalist covering KP and Fata