“Everyone has been asking me to leave the fight, but when I am alone my resolve to seek justice gets stronger,” says the victim

More than three months after a transgender was gang-raped allegedly by policemen during a pilgrimage to Ajmer, the accused officers continue to serve in the city’s police stations. A witness in the case has also been attacked and the victim, who met journalists in Delhi, alleged humiliation by the Rajasthan Police.

Addressing a press conference hosted by ‘Voices against 377’ along with the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) on Thursday, the “victim” said, “I want them to feel the pain that I underwent in those 40 minutes. Everyone has been asking me to leave the fight, but when I am alone my resolve to seek justice gets stronger.”

This paper had reported that on June 5, policemen allegedly took turns to rape one of the eight transgenders they had detained for allegedly assaulting a constable. The detainees had come from Mumbai for the Urs of Sufi saint Moinuddin Chisti.

After being released on June 10, the victim filed an FIR in which the police recorded the incident as an attempt to rape and not custodial rape — which requires a magisterial probe. The station house officer Vijay Singh Chaudhary has been suspended for allegedly extorting Rs. 40,000 from the pilgrims and the case has been transferred to the Jaipur police headquarters.

On August 10, one of the witnesses named Zoya Sheikh was attacked with knives by four men at her hotel in Ajmer, where she had come to depose before the court. She was threatened not to testify.

Rajasthan’s Director General of Police Omendra Bharadwaj told The Hindu over the phone that the rape case was under investigation by the Criminal Investigation Department. “All those accused of the assault on the witness have been identified and arrested,” he added.