The other side of the story

It took just one quick stroke of a country-made ustra (razor) to change a life forever. Ram Kumar Negi was too drugged to struggle, but not enough to numb his pain. Forced down by Ranjeeta, a hijra (eunuch), and his hefty accomplices, and stripped naked, he watched terrorised as they severed his genitals with a sharp knife, leaving a gaping wound.

Negi's shrieks died in the stillness of the dingy basement 'surgery' in a village in Etah district of western Uttar Pradesh. In the usual course of events they would have yielded to a deeper silence. The outwardly raucous world of the hijras is cloaked in its own codes and secrets. For an unwilling initiate like Negi, the brutal reality of castration is usually enervating enough to snuff out any thought of justice or retribution. Not any longer.

In Delhi, which harbours 15,000 hijras, probably the largest number anywhere in the country, the fight back has begun. A determined group of men are filing criminal charges against their castrators and seeking help from local courts to bring the perpetrators of this brutal practice to book. Examples:

• In March, 1993, Negi lodged criminal complaints in Jahangirpuri and Pitampura police stations in Delhi. When no action was taken, he approached the district court which ordered the police to carry out an inquiry.
• Jagmohan Dhyani, 25, alias Jyoti, has filed a criminal complaint against Gharsan Khan whom he accuses of severing his genitals in 1987.
• Kale Naik, 19, alias Baby, is approaching a Delhi court to get the police to inquire into his castration after the Nabi Karim police station in central Delhi refused to register a case.

Khairati Lal Bhola, a spokesman of the All India Hijra Kalyan Sabha, formed in 1984 to protect their rights, says: "While castrations had always been clandestinely forced on unwilling males, nobody else had the guts to retaliate like these people."

But the complainants have realised it is an uphill struggle. The police are unsympathetic. Braving the cynicism and ridicule of reluctant law-enforcers can often feel like a second assault.


Even the simple act of lodging an FIR is an ordeal. Ideally, the legal machinery should swing into motion once the victim files a complaint at the local police station.
The complaint, normally registered under Section 154 of the CrPC, would be followed up by an investigation and challan or charge-sheet under Section 173.

The case would then be tried by the concerned trial court. However, when Negi, Naik and Dhyani first approached the police, they refused to even register a case and did so only after the courts intervened.
"We don't like getting involved in the affairs of this community. They are not really part of our society, so why should we impose our laws on them?" argues a senior police official.

Worse, emasculation is not listed as a cognisable offence under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). "Though we don't possess sufficient data on this, it would normally fall under Section 326 or 365 of the IPC, which is "abduction and grievous injury with a sharp weapon", says L.C. Amarnathan, director, National Crime Records Bureau.

The bureau has no statistics as to how many cases of forcible emasculation may have occurred in the country. But R. Tiwari, Delhi's additional commissioner of police, crime, asserts: "I don't think there is any trend which shows a rise in forced castrations. There may be a few isolated cases, but nothing beyond that."
The local courts have been far more sympathetic. When the rebelling eunuchs complained of police inaction, the courts ordered the force to carry out investigations. But as Negi has realised, that hasn't been of too much help either. He alleges that the police did a cursory investigation and closed the case for "lack of evidence".

This is to some extent a genuine problem: conclusive evidence of coercion is certainly hard to come by. The hijra mafia which reportedly controls the castrations operates under a veil of secrecy and terror. Victims are threatened with death if they break the code of silence.

The Hijra Kalyan Sabha alleges that the hijra community operates through a countrywide network of hijra mandis, where a newly castrated eunuch is auctioned to the highest bidder.
"The auction is conducted with claps - a single clap denotes Rs 1,000. Understandably, the premium is highest on fair, clean-limbed boys who are likely to be high earners," explains Bhola.
However, the entire operation remains a secret as the hijra community is built on a pyramid structure at the apex of which are the elusive gurus, who are not only much older than the others in their ring but also exercise control over a particular ilaqa or territory for the purpose of extracting badhai (tips on joyous occasions).

According to Bhola, at least a thousand young men, many of them married and with families, are forcibly castrated each year. However, the Delhi Police reject such claims as highly exaggerated.

Dhyani talks of a hijra mafia operating in the Chakku Mohalla area of Dehra Dun where he fell into its hands. Its modus operandi is simple: lure fair, young Pahari boys into its company with temptations of good food, liquor or drugs and an easy life.
Like most victims of forcible castration, Dhyani himself acknowledges that his trouble began when he had voluntary contact with the hijra community. As an adolescent, he would loiter in the Mohalla in the company of local hijras.

In 1987, when he was 18, he says, he was kidnapped by them and brought to Delhi. He was then forced into peddling drugs and prostitution. And then one night, after being drugged, he was taken to a local 'doctor' who severed his genitals.

Negi, who was castrated a year ago. admits he used to have regular homosexual contact with hijras in his hometown of Hardwar before he was abducted and brought to Delhi.

Clean-faced and slender, Negi was renamed Rama and forced to dress as a woman, offer sex and pick pockets. When he tried to flee he was caught and tortured, and his legs scalded with flaming kerosene. And then one night, he was drugged and taken to Htah where another 'doctor' castrated him.
Police admit that it is difficult to arrest the 'doctors' who specialise in such castrations as they are usually in cahoots with the hijra mafia. One of the leading practitioners of this gruesome practice is said to be Kallo Haji. a resident of Vivek Vihar in east Delhi, who served a short sentence in 1987 on grounds of causing "grievous injury with a sharp weapon".

"He performs castrations only at the behest of the gurus and charges Rs 3,000 per case," alleges Bhola. But Haji vehemently denies this accusation and the local police maintain that he keeps to himself and does not cause trouble in the region.

Another alleged emasculator, against whom Dhyani has filed a criminal complaint for castrating him, is Gharsan Khan, 55. He is currently an undertrial in the Kakkad Dooma metropolitan court in Delhi, facing charges of murder following the death on the so-called operating table of one of the persons he was castrating.

Ombir Singh, assistant commissioner of police, Nand Nagri, says: "In the course of his first interrogation, Gharsan admitted to having performed at least a thousand castrations, out of which just one misfired and resulted in death." Khan now denies that he ever told the police so and maintains that he just rents out rickshaws for a living.

Probably one of the few occasions when a section of the hijra mafia was brought to book was in Ahmedabad in 1982. Hanif Vora, 23, a resident of Chhota Udaipur near Ahmedabad, who had been abducted and castrated in 1981, filed criminal complaints against his assailants in July 1982.
Twelve years ago, Mastubhai Maiik, along with his four accomplices, all hijras, were convicted and sentenced to five years' imprisonment each. But, Vora's friend Pratap Thakur dejectedly points out: That didn't get back his manhood."

Meanwhile, Negi undaunted by the police, recently closed his complaint for lack of evidence. "I won t let my castrators get away," he says, already contemplating a fresh legal appeal. Although he has not met with much success so far, he knows he has set an important example by striking back.
Kale Naik, too, is determined to get justice. "The Government punishes every crime. Why doesn't it take notice of something so inhuman as this?" he asks. But in the ceaseless bustle that envelops Kale's tiny tenement, the question hangs unanswered.

Source: 'http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/determined-group-of-forcibly-castrated-men-file-criminal-charges-against-their-abductors/1/293288.html'