PESHAWAR: The city police here on Saturday arrested the main accused in the murder case of transgender Alisha after a weeklong manhunt.

Alisha, who was a coordinator for Trans Action Alliance Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was shot six times on Sunday last in the limits of Faqirabad police station.

The police identified the accused as Fazal Gujjar, a resident of Ram Kishan locality of Charsadda Road.

ASP Faqirabad Waseem Riaz told Dawn that the accused was arrested from the Qazi Kallay area of the city on Saturday evening. He said that Gujjar was hiding in a room in the village and police raided the room on a tip-off and arrested him. He said that the accused had also spent some days in Badhber locality on the southern fringes of the city before coming to Qazi Kallay.

The ASP said that the accused and Alisha had a fight sometime back at a marriage function wherein the latter had allegedly hit him with a glass on his head and tore his clothes. He said that Gujjar killed Alisha in revenge for that.

“People were taunting him (Gujjar) that a transgender person had beaten him up,” Mr Riaz added. He said that the police had previously arrested five people in connection with the murder. However, he added that the accused had confessed to his crime, saying that he alone was responsible for killing Alisha.

Qamar Naseem, coordinator of Blue Veins, told Dawn that there was a criminal gang involved in cases of murder and assaults against transgender people. He said that this group raped and also filmed them.

Mr Naseem said that many cases of the transgender people’s deaths were not properly investigated in the past. He said that transgender people and their supporters who were pursuing this case were under extreme pressure as MPAs and councillors were trying to arrange jirgas on the issue.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2016