PESHAWAR: A 20-year-old transgender person was shot at in her apartment here on Sunday morning.

The transgender person named Spogmay (moon) lived in an apartment in Khyber Super Market where she was shot at five times and critically injured. She was taken to a hospital by her transgender friends but could not survive.

It is not the first time that a transgender person has met a violent death at the hand of her partner as last year another transgender person named Alisha was also shot at by her partner and later succumbed to her injuries in Lady Reading Hospital. Last month, body of another transgender person named Hajira was found in Peshawar. She was killed violently.

TransAction Alliance, a network of transgender community of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, protested the brutal killing of their community member and held a protest outside Peshawar Press Club on Sunday evening.

Protesting members of TransAction Alliance demand arrest of killers

“There is an organised group which is abducting, raping and beating transgender persons in Peshawar. We have shared number plates of the vehicle of the suspects with police but no one has helped us,” alleged Aarzo, the general secretary of TransAction Alliance.

She said that if daughter of some very important person or politicians was killed, things would not be like that. “It is just another poor transgender person, who is killed and no one cares about it,” she added. She demanded of police to arrest the killers of Spogmay.

“There is no life security for the transgender persons and there is no justice for them,” said Paro, another protesting transgender person, who last year lost her friend Alisha to almost similar violence incident.

The transgender persons chanted slogans against police for often refusing to register their complaints and FIR of cases of violence against them.

“Today it is Spogmay, tomorrow it can be me and no one seems to care if a transgender person gets killed,” Paro lamented.

Taimur Kamal, a rights activist, informed Dawn that on Sunday morning Spogmay, hailing from Quetta and living in Peshawar, was found injured. She was critical and breathed her last in the hospital. Her family, also living in Peshawar, initially refused to claim her body and perform her funeral but when some outsiders wanted to take her body, the transgender community opposed it and only under pressure the mother of the deceased decided to take away the body from the police station.

SP Waseem Riaz, in a statement, said that preliminary inquiry into the murder of Spogmay showed that a man identified as Wasiullah, who had been living with her, was seen running from the crime scene along with a gun after the incident. He said that police would get the CCTV footage of the area and investigate all aspects of the case.

Imran, the cook of Spogmay, has directly charged Wasiullah with the murder. Police also raided the house of Wasiullah and his brother in Bana Mari but no arrests were made till Sunday evening.

Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2017