Back-to-back suicides raise questions on LGBT rights
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Her father had lodged a complaint that his daughter committed suicide at 11 pm on Friday, fed up with the torture by her husband Aman Singh.
JAMSHEDPUR: The movement for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights got a major boost when the provisions of Section 377 of the IPC were scrapped, but two back-to-back incidents of suicide — one, by a transgender woman; another, by a lesbian couple — has brought the issue of social stigma faced by the gender minority into sharp focus again.
Birsanagar police on Saturday arrested Aman Singh on charges of provoking and torturing his transgender wife (who had recently changed her sex to become Choti Kumari from Raju) and sent him to jail.
Before this, on Thursday, Gamharia police had recovered the bodies of the lesbian couple — Guria Patro, 21, and Rashmita Nayak, 20 — hanging together from the same noose in their rented house in Bolaidih.
Birsanagar police station officer-in-charge Bhusan Kumar said that Choti Kumari had married Aman Singh in November this year after changing her sex. “Her father Dhaneswar Gaur had lodged a complaint on Saturday that his daughter committed BHUSAN KUMAR, Birsanagar OC
suicide at 11 pm on Friday, fed up with the torture by her husband Aman Singh. We arrested Aman on Saturday,” said the officer.
According to Dhaneswar, “it was Aman who informed me about Choti’s suicide, after which we informed the police”.
In Gamharia, station officerin-charge SN Mishra told HT that they recovered a joint selfie from the dead couple’s mobile. Guriya used to dress in shirts and trousers, while Rashmita used to wear saris.
As per the police, the girls had fled their homes in Odisha nine days ago and lived in Gamharia.