A trans-woman activist was assaulted by miscreants, and her companions were verbally abused during the Durga Puja in south Kolkata.
Days after the incident, the police have not arrested anyone and the victim has accused some police officials of “misleading and insulting her.” The police, however, denied the allegations.
The incident took place in the early hours of Saturday on Hazra Road in south Kolkata. The trans-woman, along with four of her friends, boarded the Metro from the Shyambazar station in north Kolkata. Four miscreants, who were in “an inebriated condition,” allegedly made obscene gestures at them. “When I protested they became quiet,” she told The Hindu .
She and her friends got down at the Jatin Das Park Metro station thinking their ordeal was over. But the miscreants surrounded them on Hazra Road and severely assaulted her.
“They threw me on the road and punched and kicked me causing spinal injury,” she said. After they approached a mobile police van, the police personnel “detained” the accused and told her to lodge an FIR with the Bhownipore police station. To her astonishment, the officials at the station did not arrest the miscreants saying the case was “outside their jurisdiction.”
After much delay, they told her to lodge a complaint at the Tollygunge station. But she was allegedly “insulted” by the Officer-in-Charge (OC) there. “The OC [Tollygunge station], Kishore Kumar Sharma, ridiculed us and labelled us sex workers and thieves,” she said. When they persisted, an FIR was lodged.
The OCs of both stations termed the allegations “baseless.” Tollygunge station OC Kishore Kumar Sharma asked: “Why should I abuse her? If I did not want to cooperate, then how was the FIR lodged?”
Asked if any arrests were made, Mr. Sharma only said: “We were busy due to Durga Puja. Investigation is going on.”
