The fifth of December 2019 was meant to be a historic day for India’s transgender community. With the passage of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, the country explicitly codified the civil rights of its transgender citizens for the first time. The law also mandated punishments for various crimes against transgender people, ranging from forced labour and eviction to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. It was the turning point the community had spent generations waiting for—or so they were told.
However, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a mere 20 cases were filed nationwide between 2019 and 2023. The latest year for which crime data is publicly available is 2023.
In 2020, the first year the Transgender Persons Act—or Trans Act, as many queer people call it—was in operation, just one case was recorded, in Tamil Nadu. The numbers inched up marginally in 2021, with seven cases across three states—two each in Assam and Kerala, and three in West Bengal. In 2022, the figure collapsed again: again a single case, again in Tamil Nadu. In 2023, the tally peaked at 11 cases nationwide: four in Kerala and seven in Tamil Nadu. Not a single case has been reported from north and central India.
The number of cases reported is a stark contrast to the level of violence faced by transgender people in India. A 2025 study published in the journal Transgender Health, which analysed data collected from 4,964 trans persons in India in 2014–15, found that 27.2 per cent of those surveyed had experienced physical violence and 22.3 per cent experienced sexual violence in the last 12 months. According to a 2015 report by the National AIDS Control Organisation, which used the same data source as the previous study, 31.5 per cent of transgender women interviewed reported that their first sexual encounter with a man was non-consensual.
As per the 2011 census, there are 4,87,803 transgender people in India—an undercount since the data is a decade and a half old. Considering the indications from the studies, it stands to reason that even if a fraction of the violence to which trans people are subjected had reached the law enforcement system, there would have been an avalanche of cases being filed under the Trans Act.
“Compared to the flood of complaints surfacing in community networks, informal support groups, and legal aid collectives, these numbers are not just low; they are irreconcilable with lived realities,” said Sunny,* a 43-year-old trans man, activist, and educator based in Delhi.
Through interviews with activists, lawyers, and transgender persons who had filed cases, queerbeat set out to answer two entangled questions: What explains all the missing cases? And what happens when a case is actually filed?
The answers we found are a damning verdict on the efficacy of the Trans Act.
“They abducted us”
On the afternoon of 1 September 2022, five people—four men and a woman—barged into Aasra, a shelter home for trans men in Gurugram, recalled Gautam RamChandra, a trans rights activist who was then overseeing the shelter’s operations. Gautam is no longer with Aasra.
Aasra had begun its operations just two years before this incident, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The shelter was operated by the Transgender Welfare Equity and Empowerment Trust (TWEET) Foundation, a trans rights NGO working with the Indian government and private institutions for the welfare and empowerment of transgender persons.
“Usual residents that would come to Aasra were people who were looking for jobs in the city, to pursue higher studies, or ones who were thrown out of their houses, and crisis cases, where people are being threatened by biological families, and so on,” Gautam told queerbeat.
His responsibilities included registering new residents with the local police. According to Gautam, parents frequently allege that their children were kidnapped or brainwashed into changing their gender identity. To preempt these accusations and the legal challenges that may follow, the shelter requires every new resident to file a formal statement with the police confirming that they are living there of their own choice.
So, Dino,* a trans man in his mid-twenties, also filed one such statement with the police on 6 August 2022, according to a press release issued by Aasra. In it, he wrote that he had voluntarily moved to the shelter to escape the mental and physical violence he was facing from his natal family.
Less than a month later, the group of intruders reached Aasra’s doorstep.
Gautam recognised one of the men immediately. He was Dino’s father—a police officer from Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh. Gautam later realised the woman in the group was Dino’s mother. “I greeted him [the father] calmly and asked him to sit and talk,” recalled Gautam. “Before anything could happen, the others started beating me.”
Shaman Gupta, who was the co-chairperson of Transgender Welfare Equity and Empowerment Trust (TWEET) Foundation, the trans rights NGO that runs the shelter, was also present at the scene. “They pointed at Gautam and said, ‘This is the guy’,” Shaman told queerbeat. “I didn’t even know what the allegation was before they started beating him [Gautam].” When Shaman tried to intervene, the intruders assaulted him as well.
“They caught my collar and dragged me out, too,” Shaman said. “I wasn’t even wearing slippers. We were pushed onto the road in front of neighbours and forced into a police jeep.”
Shaman’s phone was snatched when he attempted to record the incident, he recounted. “They abducted us from our home without any warrant,” Gautam said. “They kept beating us continuously—in the car, and later inside the police station.”
Gautam and Shaman were taken to the nearby DLF Phase 3 Police Station in Gurugram. “For a while, I genuinely didn’t know if they were taking us somewhere to kill us,” said Shaman. “When I realised we were being taken to a police station, I felt relaxed.”
queerbeat emailed the DLF Phase 3 Police Station for clarification regarding Gautam and Shaman’s alleged abduction and assault. We sought to understand why they were brought to the police station, whether they were officially arrested, and if so, the specific charges filed against them. We also questioned why a police officer from Uttar Pradesh was allegedly operating within the jurisdiction of a Gurugram station and using its infrastructure. We have not received a response yet.
Recalling the events at the police station, Gautam added that instead of intervening, local police personnel allegedly enabled the assault. “They gave those four men [who had abducted them] a room inside the police station,” Gautam said. “And inside that room, we were beaten again.” Shaman corroborated this account, adding that officers from the DLF Phase 3 Police Station mocked them when they tried to protest.
“When we tried to tell them this was a government-supported shelter home, they laughed,” Shaman said. “They said things like, ‘The government supports gender change?’ They had no idea about the Trans Act, and no interest in learning.”
For over an hour, Gautam and Shaman were slapped, threatened, and pressured to disclose the whereabouts of Dino, who was at his workplace at the time. “They unlocked my phone by force,” Shaman said. “They read my old chats with Dino and accused me of ‘brainwashing’ their child.”
Gautam and Shaman said their ordeal finally ended later that day when Abhina Aher, founder of TWEET Foundation, intervened along with other trans rights activists.
“He came in uniform, without jurisdiction, and without a warrant—using his position for a personal matter,” Gautam said, reflecting on Dino’s father’s role in the alleged assault and abduction. “That is a clear abuse of power.”
For Shaman and Gautam, the incident illustrated a grim reality: when those who are meant to protect become the aggressors, the victims are left with no confidence that their cases will ever be taken seriously.
Their harrowing experience is far from isolated. Many transgender persons avoid approaching law enforcement even in situations involving severe violence, said Sunny.* “I know a lot of people who’ve experienced violations under the Act, including myself, but have not reported them,” he said. “This is partly because the police continue to have a strong anti-trans bias.”
This bias is deeply rooted in state institutions, according to Tripti Tandon, an advocate associated with the legal aid NGO Lawyers Collective. Tripti has been invited by various government bodies as a resource person to train officials on the provisions of the Trans Act. Many of the officials who participate in these workshops tend to see trans people merely as “troublemakers”, she observed.
Drawing a parallel to the evolution of women’s rights in the legal system, Tripti noted that while law enforcement institutions were largely inaccessible to women in the 1970s and ’80s, the state eventually introduced specialised measures like dedicated cells for crimes against women and Mahila police stations.
Although she believes the status quo for women remains far from “fair and equal” today, she argues that the transgender community has yet to see even that basic level of recognition. “For transgender persons, who’ve always been on the margins, who’ve never even been seen like victims until date… Neither the state nor the society actually views them as persons who deserve respect and dignity and protection,” Tripti said.
A law that fails to protect
Gautam and Shaman attempted to pursue legal action with the help of TWEET Foundation. “We had visible bruises all over our bodies,” Gautam said. queerbeat has reviewed the medico-legal case reports issued by Narayana Super Speciality Hospital in Gurugram, which noted “soft tissue injuries” for both Gautam and Shaman and called for CT scans. The scans alone cost over ₹50,000, which the organisation had to pay, said Gautam.
They filed a complaint at DLF Phase 3 Police Station alleging that they had been threatened, beaten, and abducted by the five people who had intruded into the shelter. They alleged that the assault continued at the police station, in the presence of officers posted there. The complaint urged strict action against Dino’s parents, their accomplices, and the officers attached to DLF Phase 3 Police Station. queerbeat has reviewed a copy of the complaint. Shaman said that the police refused to register an FIR, even though CCTV cameras at the police station had clearly recorded the assault and abduction. “They kept our complaint but never gave us an FIR number,” he said.
The case moved to the Supreme Court of India. But eventually, Gautam and Shaman withdrew their complaint. Dino had backed out of the case, informing the TWEET Foundation that he had reconciled with his family and did not want to pursue any action against them, Gautam added.
Gautam told queerbeat, “Before he [Dino] requested this [pulling out of the case], there were multiple hearing dates and his parents never showed up; it was just date after date… nothing much was happening.” It didn’t seem that the law enforcement system could compel the perpetrators to appear in court, which was all very frustrating, said Gautam.
Had the case resulted in a conviction under the Trans Act, the maximum punishment possible would have been imprisonment for six months to two years, and a fine. The Act does not even specify a minimum or maximum amount for the fine. Even before the Trans Act was passed, activists warned that its weak penalties would undermine its ability to protect the community. Vyjayanti Vasanta Mogli, a Hyderabad-based transgender rights activist, argued that it fails to provide the same level of protection as other legislations designed to protect marginalised populations, such as the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. “Any perpetrator, any accused, any assailant cannot get deterred by this [Trans] Act,” she said. “It’s quite laughable.”
The Trans Act prescribes the same punishment for verbal abuse, assault, or rape, despite differences in the severity of the crime. Tripti believes the law is vaguely worded and hard to use. In her view, the few offences listed under the act seem to have been “randomly and arbitrarily” chosen and “don’t encompass a lot of the violence and crimes and issues that transgender persons face.”
She also recalled that there was much hue and cry over this provision when the bill was introduced in Parliament. “But at the time, there was some sort of a saving grace because Section 20 [of the Act] says that other laws will also apply, ” she said.
Sunny believes that the law only protects trans persons in theory. “The law would be strengthened if it acknowledged that trans people face heightened violence and made penalties for that kind of violence stiffer,” he said.
Even the Supreme Court of India has agreed with the criticisms of the Trans Act emerging from community leaders and activists, as Vyjayanti and Tripti pointed out. In its judgement in Jane Kaushik v. Union of India, the Court castigated the government for reducing the Trans Act to “dead letters”. It noted that “the Union of India and the States have exhibited a grossly apathetic attitude towards the transgender community, by defacing the lived realities of this community with their inaction. Considering the protraction of this inaction… it appears intentional and seems to stem from deep-rooted societal stigma and the lack of bureaucratic will to effectuate the provisions of the 2019 Act and the 2020 Rules”. (The Court was referring to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Rules, 2020. Rules are detailed instructions that specify how an act will be implemented.)
In the same judgement, the Court ordered the creation of an advisory committee “to address the concerns of the transgender community.” The committee, along with other measures, was also directed to highlight gaps in the 2019 Act and 2020 Rules. Vyjayanti, one of the members of the committee, declined to comment on its proceedings since they are confidential.
Until the attitudes of police officers change, until protections are created against the specific risks trans people face, and until penalties reflect the gravity of violence, the Trans Act will remain what it largely is today—a law that exists on paper, but disappears when it is most needed.
Perhaps the most damning indictment of the status quo comes from Gautam’s reflection on privilege and access in the quest for justice. “We had lawyers. We had medical reports. We had organisational backing and community support,” he said. “And still we failed.”
Gautam said the police’s unwillingness to register a case and the court’s seemingly endless delays send a chilling message to the transgender community. “If this is what happens when you have resources,” he said, “what chance does someone without them have?”