MADURAI:Following Supreme Court’s directive last year to include transgenders as third sex, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has included them as a separate category in its gender-wise classification in the Accidental Deaths and Suicides Report in India (ADSI) for the year 2014, which was released on Friday.
Activists, however, opine that the data provided appear to be far removed from reality as the “Transgender” column is mostly filled with zeroes in the report pertaining to suicides and accidents.
For instance, while the suicide rate among transgender community (which is roughly around five lakhs according to 2011 census) is believed to be high because of the discrimination they face, the report states that only 16 transgenders had committed suicide in 2014 throughout the country. Of these, six suicides happened in Uttar Pradesh, four in Tamil Nadu, three in Maharashtra, two in Karnataka and 1 in Andhra Pradesh while rest of the 25 States and 7 union territories reported no suicides of transgenders.
Kalki Subramanian, transgender activist and poet, said most of the suicides have been reported wrongly. “Suicides among transgenders happen mostly when they come to terms with reality about their gender but the family reject them. In such cases, when the family reports the incident to police, the deceased person is reported as a boy or a girl,” Kalki said. Kalki attributed the anomaly to lack of awareness among police personnel to record such people as transgenders.
A senior police officer, however, attributed it to the timing of Supreme Court order which came out in April 2014. He said a circular was issued by the office of Tamil Nadu police chief asking to follow Supreme Court order and that specific instructions came only much later. He hoped that the data will get regularised from next year.