MANSEHRA: A member of the transgender community was allegedly attacked and tortured early on Sunday, Mansehra police said.
According to a first information report of the incident, a man accompanied by his relatives attacked the transgender person while she was at home. The transgender person sustained several bruises and was shifted to the District Headquarters Hospital, the police said.
TransAction, a rights group advocating for transgender rights, protested the attack. It alleged that 479 incidents of violence and eight murders of the transgender persons have taken place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2018 alone. “The silence of the provincial government is criminal and shameful,” the group said.
TransAction has also said that members of the community would hold a sit-in protest in front of the Peshawar Press Club to demand that the government take measures to stop violence against the transgender community. Instead of providing them security, the police had advised the transgender community to stay indoors after 10pm, the group said.
On the other hand, the main accused named in the FIR has made a countreclaim in an application to the area’s DPO stating that members of the community had actually beaten up her son, who was missing since the attack. The mother also claimed that her son was lured into spending time with the transgender community by the injured person in spite of the mother’s repeated requests for them to stay away from her son.