A first information report (FIR) was registered against suspects who allegedly gunned down three transgender persons in Karachi, it emerged on Monday.

The bodies of three transgender individuals were recovered from Karachi’s Memon Goth area after midnight on Sunday, according to Edhi Information Centre. It said the bodies were found riddled with bullet holes and that the deceased were taken to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for medicolegal formalities.

The complaint was filed at Memon Goth police station on Sunday under Sections 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) and 302 (murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

According to the FIR, registered by a transgender person who lived in the same building as the three victims, they told the complainant on Saturday evening that they were headed to Bahria Town on Super Highway.

“I tried calling them, but they did not answer. I kept calling them until 1am,” the complainant stated in the FIR. Ït was not until I opened WhatsApp that I found they were headed back to Karachi from Nagori Society in Hyderabad, when they were attacked in a forested area on the Super Highway.

“An unknown person, or persons, shot and killed them,” the complainant alleged. “I filed this complaint because unknown people killed them for unknown reasons and legal action needs to be taken.”

A research report jointly compiled this year by Blue Veins and the National Commission on Human Rights found that many transgender individuals in Pakistan experience social exclusion, including rejection by families, employment discrimination and violence, pushing them further into vulnerability.

In July, armed motorcyclists killed a transgender person in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Malakand division. The same month, another transgender person was shot dead by unidentified persons in the Tehkal area of Peshawar.

Last year, two transgender persons were stabbed to death in Mardan by assailants, who fled the scene after committing the crime, according to the police.