2 years, 2 months ago-
A survey conducted on nearly 5,000 transgender people by the national AIDS control organisations showed that one-fifth of transgender people had experienced sexual violence. India’s rape laws do not do injustice to transgender people because they define men as criminals and women as the victims. In the past few years, India has seen numerous rape cases which sent shockwaves throughout the country. There also have been nationwide protests, jet they do not recognise the problem associated with other genders. They do not recognise that it is necessary to protect the other genders. Punishment for physical and sexual abuse of a transgender person is made of six months and a maximum of 2 years in prison with a fine. This has been listed under the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019.
Transgender community visitor landmark judgement which gave them the right to self identify and male or female. They celebrated this progress as it made a huge impact on their fight for equality. “The transgender identity in India is extremely diverse. In some (Indian) cultures transgender persons and believed to have to define powers and based on the particular feature in the belong to for the practices to follow they have different names such as hijras, kinnars, arvaris, jogtas,” said Diana Dias. Police do not also seem to take into consideration the complaints made by the transgender people. There have been cases where the police have made lewd gestures and said in their local language how they wanted to rape the Transgender and show them their place. Sometimes police register the complaints of the victims but don’t take any further action. Sexual crimes should be made gender-neutral. They should work for every gender. They also should not become heavy on a particular gender. After the introduction of a bill by KTS Tulsi, to make these crimes gender-neutral, it was said by Tulsi that he didn’t intend to undermine the experiences of women subjected to rape and discrimination. He also said that society must develop empathy for all which includes male and transgender victims.The 2019 LGBTQ Act, the 2019 “2019 law” obtained the approval of a Chairman and became in force and was the law that governed transgender in India. DECEMBER 5 of 2019 marked the dark day for the LGBTQ. It was notoriously short of its expectations, however, and added to the challenges already existent in the socio-legal arena of India. In 2014, a pathbreaking judgment on NALSA v. Union of India[‘NALSA decision’] was issued by the Supreme Court of India, and the transgender/third sex was acknowledged as ‘persons’ within Article 14 of the Indian constitution. This legal move was motivated by granting equal treatment and equity to transgender individuals and eliminating the ‘second-degree citizens’ status.
While certain major mistakes in the 2018 very controversial draught law have been corrected in current legislation, it still violates the 2014 judgment greatly. Discrimination against members of the transgender community in sexual crimes is one of the major gaps in the Act. Following the NALSA decision, the need of the hour to ensure compliance with constitutional principles was a clear legislative measure. For this, a comprehensive statute was required, which would give the members of the transgender community equal status and respect. However, the issue is that this regulation does not, as referred to in Article 14, offer the Community equal protection of the law in the field of sexual offenses. Article 18(d) of this Act deals with offenses that have a sexual character as a small offense and are less serious in comparison with similar offenses against women. This is an obvious contravention of the constitutional spirit which leads to the need to deal with this injustice as a matter of urgency and it has been further developed in the next section for clarification of the problem.
Despite the insufficiency of the law for 2019, hope remains for an improvement in the status quo and for the elimination of legal inequality. The private KTS Tulsi member presented on 12 July 2019 a bill aiming at changing criminal legislation and neutralizing sexual offenses in line with the criminal code. Given the limited range of sexual crimes (including rape), the transgender population has suffered the most in India today. The Apex Court also emphasized in its NALSA judgment the concerns of transgender people who are subjected to sexual violence. It should therefore be said that nonconsensual sexual intercourse with the penetration of any individual must be classified as rape. Such an enlargement of the concept would ensure that the rights of individuals are protected, regardless of their social structure.Rape is a crime whether it happens with women or transgenders. We cannot associate a crime like rape with gender because that will only increase ignorance when it happens with transgenders or others. As men or women, transgenders are human too and a crime is a crime that cannot be discriminated against on the basis of gender. When a rapist rapes a woman, he gets a punishment that shall not be less than ten years, but which may extend to imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine. So why a transgender when raped doesn’t get justice and have to keep struggling to get justice? This country doesn’t have laws to punish a rapist if the victim is transgender. Gender neutrality shouldn’t be confined to men and women because we must know that there are not only two genders in this world and other genders deserve the same rights that males and females get. The debate on gender neutrality was limited to the binary of male and female and whether or not a man can be a victim of rape but there was no consideration given to transgender victims at the time. Government should make the law for rape gender-neutral for victims and perpetrators. This crime cannot be non-criminalized because of the fact that the victim is transgender. Rape cannot be justified whatsoever, doesn’t matter it happens with a woman or man or LGBTQ community. The LGBTQ community has been fighting for their rights for a long time now and has filed a petition in the supreme court. The petition filed to the Supreme Court in October seeks to make the punishment for sexually assaulting a transgender person equal to that for sexually assaulting a woman. RAPE IS RAPE!!! Which should be criminalized irrespective of the gender.
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