A transgender came under attack late on Sunday night as unidentified miscreants attempted to torch her house, a private media outfit has reported.
Arzu, a government employee and a board member of Transgender Alliance, had been receiving threatening phone calls which she had reported to the police, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Trans Action Alliance said.
The suspects had demanded Rs 1 million as extortion money, following which they were arrested. The police however refused to lodge an FIR and granted them bail.
Trans Action Alliance Chairperson Qamar Naseem said, “The accused hurled life threats to Arzu in front of the station house officer, but the police refused to take action.”
In May, the association’s coordinator Alisha succumbed to her injuries after she was shot six times in Peshawar. Alisha was shifted to Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar in critical condition.
However, LRH authorities could not provide her urgent care as they kept her waiting for over an hour while deciding whether to shift her in the male or female ward.
Qamar Naseem, coordinator of Blue Veins programme, said LRH authorities are to blame for Alisha’s death as they “failed to provide her with urgent care or necessary facilities as she was transgender.”
The association claimed an organised criminal gang that extorts money from the transgender community is behind the attack on Alisha. The alliance also claimed that transgender persons are being forced by the gang into making porn videos.
Separately, last month, a transgender person was critically injured after being shot multiple times for allegedly resisting sexual advances of a group of armed men who barged in to her house in Mansehra.
The development came weeks after a transgender activist succumbed to her injuries after being shot multiple times in KP’s provincial capital Peshawar and denied treatment at the hospital.
