Is Telangana police’s motto of duty, honour and compassion applicable to queer-trans persons?

Being the youngest state of the Indian Union, this year Telangana state hosted its decadal celebrations. Telangana's statehood is a result of decades of people's movements including student groups, workers' unions and women's groups. Transgender groups too extended their solidarity through their participation. I was in university during the peak of the Telangana movement and had the privilege to witness the power of grassroots movements..One would imagine that a state that was founded on the struggle of people and movements that survived police brutality would be more cautious and mindful of the power exercised by the police. And as a statehood that only became a reality because of so many marginalised communities' collective work, one would expect it to be able to be more inclusive and understanding of the margins and the people who inhabit them. The reality is far from it — especially when it comes to the police. Irrespective of what the reality is now, the new statehood brought in new hope and did bring many rightful aspirations and desires of so many communities to life. Like many, even transgender people hoped for the dawn of a new era for their rights and welfare in their 'bangaru Telangana.' In fact, the queer-trans communities in an act of embracing the new Telangana statehood and also claiming their rightful place in it, renamed the Hyderabad Queer Pride to Telangana Queer Swabhimana Yatra, placing it in the context of the rich history of people's movements in the Telangana region as well as in the local socio-cultural landscape.The year 2014 when Telangana state was formed was also important for Transgender people for another reason. It was in April 2014 that the Supreme Court of India gave its historical judgement in the case of NALSA Vs. Union of India, and for the first time recognised the constitutional rights of trans people and established the right to self-determine one's gender identity. Close to a decade after Telangana's formation and the historical verdict regarding trans people's identity and rights, trans people in the state still await a significant shift in their lives.As the wait continues, queer-trans lives continue to get thrown between the progressive and regressive actions of various state institutions. Thanks to the years of work by various community activists and community-based organisations, the Women's Development and Child Welfare department towards the end of the COVID-19 pandemic started a jute bag making skill development programme for trans women. Two batches have successfully finished the training programme and this even resulted in setting up a production unit for those trans women. Later, the Women Safety Wing of Telangana State Police came forward to set up a protection cell for queer-trans people and this resulted in the creation of 'Pride Place - Transgender (LGBTQIA+) Persons Protection Cell', the first of its kind in India. Pride Place has objectives that are community-centric and even did a half-day long online training program for all Telangana Police Station SHOs and other officers. And little over a year ago, the Telangana government issued a Government Order (GO) constituting a State Welfare Board for Transgender People with various departments and some community members and organisations as part of it. However, the government is yet to make any movement in the direction of affirmative action such as horizontal reservation for trans persons. Meanwhile, there are government officials who demand physical check ups of trans people in order to let them change their name and gender in their educational certificates..The positive developments have not changed much of the ground reality for queer-trans persons in the state. Queer-trans individuals are subjected to a great deal of discrimination, disrespect, abuse, and lack of acceptance starting from their natal families to almost everywhere else in the society. Even after the reading down of Sec 377 by the Supreme Court of India decriminalising homosexuality, and enacting of Transgender Person's (Protection of Rights) Act 2019 and Rules 2020 not much has changed in public perception, in fact, it would be right to say that the government has not moved much in the direction of informing and educating the larger society about LGBTQIA+ communities. Governments that spend so much money to build their image among the public clearly seem to have no concern about how the widespread misconceptions and unscientific notions about diverse gender and sexual identities are harming the most marginalised LGBTQIA+ groups in society.In addition to the government's inaction in the area, the community is burdened by the occasional harmful actions of Telugu mainstream media and many YouTube Telugu content makers. On May 5, 2023 a popular regional Telugu news channel broadcast a 16 minutes 37 seconds program titled ‘Padu Prapancham (dirty world) - Big Story on LGBTQ People Growth All over the World'. This video narrated a dangerously misinformed, hateful, transphobic, homophobic, and factually wrong story about queer-trans people. It not only insulted queer-trans people and communities but also provoked mainstream society against trans people by constructing our lives as unnatural and as a great blot on society’s well-being. The thumbnail of the news item on Youtube says ‘చాపకింద నీరులా పెరిగిపోతున్న నపుంసకులు’ which not only conflates LGBTQIA+ people with people with impotence, but it even implies that LGBTQIA+ population is nefariously increasing, thereby putting society in danger. The media channel ignored all the legal and legislative changes that have happened in the country in the last decade, forgoing all their responsibility as a media channel. One search on YouTube will show many homophobic and transphobic so-called pranks in Telugu; this of course evades any and all legal accountability. Even in 2023, the question that persists for queer-trans people is what do we do about this constant attack from people and institutes as we continue to struggle in building our lives in a world that is so hostile to us..It is clear that the larger society continues to hold onto the age-old transphobic and homophobic beliefs very dear and the (ir)responsible Telugu media seems to promote and strengthen such beliefs. Like most marginalised people in society when our rights are under attack and lives are threatened queer-trans people do not have a default instinct of going to the police. But in most instances, there is no other alternative but to go to the police. In 2023 with so many judicial interventions, legal changes, and legislative advances it should be rational to think that the institutions and people in it who are in charge of law and order, responsible for preventing and addressing crime in society will also uphold the law when it comes to LGBTQIA+ persons'/communities’ rights. But unfortunately, that is far from the reality.In spite of the well-intended well-meaning Pride Place - Transgender (LGBTQIA+) Person’s Protection Cell by the Women's Safety Wing, the change among police officials, especially among ground-level personnel, is almost nonexistent. Here are some instances from the recent past:In the instances where a trans man and a cis woman couple elope, most often, the cisgender partner’s family approaches the police and files a kidnapping case on the trans man. In order to address this, they are often compelled to appear in the police station and give in writing that they are legal adults and that they left their homes voluntarily. In a couple of cases, I personally witnessed police personnel 'counselling' the cis partner to listen to their parents who raised her and go with them; they would even ask her what life she would have with another woman, completely disregarding the trans man’s gender identity. In one case, a police personnel told the trans man that he could 'prove' he was a man by pulling his pants down, and challenged the trans man to do the same. In another incident, a female police officer was bullying the cis-female partner to go with her parents, and when I intervened and asked the officer not to talk like that and that she had a constitutional right to live her life as she wished, the officer snapped back.Taking advantage of the vulnerability of gay men, many persons/groups have been using online dating sites to blackmail, abuse, and extort money from them. In one such incident, a young gay man went to the police station to lodge a complaint after he was robbed by a person he met online. As he narrated his experience to the police, the disgust and homophobia were evident in their giggles — and it did not stop there. One Sub Inspector officer went on to ask ‘How can you be on sites like this’ with Sec 377. Upon being informed that Sec 377 was read down, he refused to accept it. In another extortion and blackmail case that involved sexual and physical abuse, when the survivor took courage and decided to file a complaint, instead of supporting them the SHO of the police station told them that they were criminals because they were on the dating site and they can be booked under Sec 377, and was reluctant to file an FIR. Even after he was informed about the 2018 Supreme Court judgement, he refused to believe it.One police station SHO of a posh locality in Hyderabad, after receiving a complaint from a fancy shop about the presence of hijra women in front of his outlet, took a group of three hijra women to the police station and beat them black and blue. They were held in the station overnight and let go only the next evening. He even warned them not to ever show up ‘in his area’ again. Police even threatened to arrest other community members who went to the station to find out what was happening. In another incident when a group of hijra women were detained by police, a community activist went to the police station to find out what's happening and introduced herself as a member of Telangana state welfare board for transgender persons. In response, the police told her that they do not know anything about such a board and that if she speaks any more, they will detain her as well.On August 18, 2023, in different parts of Hyderabad, many hijra women were picked up by the police saying that they were begging. As far as we are aware, hijra women were picked up at Secunderabad Sangeet junction, Paradise, Jubilee Bus stand, Patny centre. Nineteen people were arrested and sent to different police stations including Mahankali Police Station, Market Police Station, Marredpally police station, and Gopalpuram police station. Some of the hijra women's gurus were also contacted and asked to come to the police station. When they showed up at the police station, they were questioned for providing shelter to these trans women and were also arrested. Community members who visited these police stations and met the people arrested, heard from them that they were beaten. Police even made everyone undress and checked their genitalia in the pretext of establishing their gender identity and took money from them, purchased pants and shirts and forced some of them to change their dress. On August 20, 2023, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (North Zone) and the authority investigating this matter, addressed a press conference and called this phenomenon an “interrogation” to make them “confess” that they are biological males who are posing as transgender women. In the press conference, the arrest and detention of transgender persons has been termed as “crackdown” to curb a “menace”. Furthermore, it has also been called an organised crime. In the press conference, it has been further stated that they are “fake” transgender persons. Basically the DCP called everyone who got surgeries as trans people and whoever did not have surgeries as fake or aspiring to be trans people, in complete disregard to NALSA Vs Union of India judgement of the Supreme Court and the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019.On September 9, at midnight, the Task Force of Telangana police rounded up 90 queer people on the charge that they were ‘gay’, in complete ignorance of the decriminalisation of Sec 377 that occurred five years ago. After turning off the CCTV cameras, they verbally abused each and every person with Telugu cuss words. Two people who tried to object to their actions were slapped on their faces. Anyone who tried engaging with them civilly was asked, ‘Do you think you have come to a temple or school?’ They even said ‘LGBT is illegal’ and ‘we don’t want you in the society’. Then they were all taken to the police station and further abused. Their phones were seized by the police and were returned only on Sunday afternoon.The above instances show two things. One, police personnel are not updated with the new legal changes, no awareness about Sec 377 being read down, no knowledge of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019, or if they are updated, they choose to ignore them as it doesn’t agree with their cultural, religious and caste beliefs. This is not a new problem and certainly not a problem for queer people alone, cisgender women and oppressed caste people have suffered this for a long time and continue to do so. In some of these instances which were brought to the notice of activists, senior officials later addressed the issue, but this certainly is not a sustainable way forward.These are just a few instances in the recent past. The citizens of our country, especially those privileged by patriarchy, caste, religion, tradition, and class, abide more by these affiliations than by the law. But what seems to be a more harsh reality is that the police personnel who work in the business of maintaining law and order and ensuring the safety of everyone are also operating from their personal place of caste, class, religious, patriarchal, cis-het beliefs. Undoubtedly these beliefs are deeply ingrained in all of us, but a person who is not a police officer having no understanding regarding the law, is very different from a person who is a law enforcing officer, whose reliance on personal beliefs is more than the law.Of course, the queer rights activist in me demands more training, sensitisation, and policy-level changes in the police department to ensure queer people’s smooth access to police and for quick redressal of their issues. But the important question is would just training on gender, sex, and sexuality be enough?After Telangana state was formed, it was publicly visible how much police infrastructure has been modernised with new buildings, new vehicles, more CCTV cameras, digital instruments and so on, and in this line, the new addition is the world-class command control centre. The police exteriority has been transformed to a great extent. But what does this modernisation mean for the public, for a lot of whom police are the only resort in times of crisis? There is a law that safeguards one’s rights, and there is infrastructural establishment visible all around, but what about the police personnel who are not trained to see things objectively through constitutional and legal lenses?Telangana State Police have two interesting aspects to consider. One, their motto on their logo says ‘duty, honour and compassion’ and second, in recent times they've been using the phrase ‘friendly policing.’ How can compassion meaningfully be incorporated into action? How can policing be friendly, and to whom? Even in our greatest mainstream imaginations, our movies, we seem incapable of envisioning a compassionate or friendly police. In fact, we consistently glorify the use of violence by those in uniform to maintain law and order and protect citizens who merit sympathy with complete disregard to the judiciary and the Constitution of this country. Compassionate to those who deserve compassion. Friendly to those worthy of being friends. Violence for the rest of us. Before we sink deeper into the beliefs that surveillance means safety, hardline controlling of marginalised communities is law and order, and violence as a fair tool for police, it is much needed for the state to rethink what policing means in today’s world. Can the Telangana police be compassionate in its practice informed by constitutional values, and can friendly policing be fair and just, not limited to only so-called ‘respectable’ (read dominant caste, upper class and gender-conforming) few of the society? As queer-trans people, we break societal norms at many levels and we challenge the notions of respectability. We are the litmus test to police’s ability to rise above their personal biases and do their work while abiding by the law of the land. Whether it is queer people, or people accused of crime(s), or people convicted of a crime, everyone, as a citizen of this nation, has certain inalienable rights granted by the Constitution and that includes freedom from police brutality and violence. It is also understandable that in an increasingly challenging and unsafe world, policing is an extremely difficult job. Police personnel are from the larger society and also need all the support they can get to do their job well. It is not only important but essential for the government to think about what kind of training, programmes, and support mechanisms they can offer to the police in order to enable policing that is compassionate and policing that recognises and understands the socio-political-economic-cultural complexity of the world they engage with and offer service to. At the least, the government should immediately start with programmes that offer continued legal education, refresher courses, and especially programmes that help police to not act from a place of their personal beliefs and morals but from a place of clear understanding of the Constitution and commitment to not harming ANYONE in course of their work. For policing to be about the well-being of people, the well-being of the police should be a priority as well for the government. The police personnel should be provided with adequate mental health support to deal with the stressors of their job. The government should employ trained and qualified mental health professionals at each ACP-level jurisdiction and make free mental health services accessible to police to help them with their stress, anxiety, and depression and support their emotional well-being thus enabling them to have healthy lives resulting in healthy, compassionate and ethical engagement with the public. Tashi Choedup [They/She] is a trans feminine Buddhist monastic (nunk) with a long time experience in human rights and community work. They currently work at Queer-Trans Wellness and Support Center (QT Center), Yugantar.