Here's why Coimbatore-based Dalit trans woman cop tried to end life twice and quit job
Life for Nazriya was content once. Then it wasn't.
After years of travails and two suicide attempts later, Coimbatore-based Dalit trans woman Nazriya, who quit her job as a cop with the Coimbatore City police early this month, narrates her story to The New Indian Express online.
Suicide Bid
Her first suicide bid was in the year 2018. She was serving as a cop in a police station in Ramanathapuram district when she consumed rat poison and ended up in a hospital. Doctors saved her life. Well-wishers who visited her soon after she was discharged from the hospital offered a word like a lucky charm. The word was "endurance".
Today, she is trying just that - to endure.
"I couldn't put up with the harassment I suffered at the hands of officers at the police station," Nazriya recalls when asked why she tried to end her life.
As a trans woman belonging to the Dalit community, she had to deal with the insults and sexual advances of the higher officers. There were occasions when they misbehaved with her.
The cheerfulness she felt during the initial days of her career, especially the secure feeling she felt when she wore the khaki uniform disappeared.
Suicide Bid Again
City: Coimbatore.
Nazriya has been working as a cop in the city for the last four years. As the year 2023 dawned, her travails had only compounded.
On January 15, 2023, Nazriya went to twenty pharmacies and bought one sleeping pill from each shop after a breakdown.
She swallowed 18 sleeping pills and saved two pills. In a semi-conscious state, she went to Singanallur Police station to lodge a complaint against Meenambikai, the inspector of police, who Nazriya says made her life miserable. The officers there directed her to go to the Race Course Police station. Finally, she ended up in the office of the City Police Commissioner. Nazriya does not remember much of what followed. But she survived.
Nazriya Recalls
It was soon after Meenambikai took charge as inspector of police at the Special Juvenile Aid Police (SJAP) within the Coimbatore City jurisdiction six months ago that her problems began to multiply.
What unfolded was months of emotional torture and exhaustion for her.
She was isolated by her colleagues who, among other things, humiliated her whenever they got an opportunity. For instance, they cleaned the glass in which she drank water reminding her of the practice of untouchability. Nazriya recalls that during such occasions she felt isolated and lonely.
On Her Sense of Responsibility
"My sense of righteousness comes from my willingness to stay accountable and responsible", she says.
“As a trans woman, I was very particular about not asking for any favours. I understand that I have to do my duty as everyone else. I have never shied away from my responsibility. I never told my higher-ups that I don't know or cannot do a job assigned to me," she said.
Even when she lacked much knowledge of an assignment, she would observe how others did it and figure it out on her own.
Enduring Exclusion
In September 2022, Nazriya was assigned a special duty on Vinayaga Chathurthi day. She was summoned to the control room at six am and assigned duty at Vellalore village, over 10 km away from her station. Her duty was to guard the Vinayagar idols installed in pandals. While her colleagues who were assigned duty at the same time as she was were given permission to wind up their duty at 2 pm as per schedule she was not allowed to leave.
“I rang up the station. Thereafter I rang up the inspector of police. The reply I got was the person who would replace me will be sent soon, ” Nazriya said. But she was relieved only after a trainee cop arrived at 6 pm. When she asked the trainee cop about the delay in arriving at Vellalore, he quietly answered that he had to be at the station from 2 pm to 6 pm.
Unfortunately for her, she had to resume duty three hours later at 9 pm again.
Nazriya says that it took one hour for her to get home from duty. She was so short of time she was perplexed as to what to do -- whether to cook, eat or wash her uniform.
Nazriya wrote down her ordeal in the "beat book" - the book in which cops record their duty timings - to ask the commissioner why the department is unfair towards her.
Discrimination & More Exclusion
To put on record a few of the discriminations she faced, Nazriya says, her colleagues enjoyed the privilege of swapping shifts among themselves. Nazriya was not only excluded from that circle, but her colleagues refused to relieve her from hectic duty days for a month at a stretch.
During December 2022’s annual mobilization camp for the armed reserve, Nazriya was allotted escorting duty. Officials from the armed reserve would go to the camp and officials from local stations will take their place in the duties.
“I, and another official named Kalairani were assigned with such duties. Kalairani, after doing guard duty for two days, was relieved by sub-inspector Taj Nisha. Taj Nisha was relieved by an official called Raj Priya. Another official named Prema relieved Raj Priya. Officials took turns. However, I had to do thirty consecutive duties, which mostly involved my escorting the accused to courts," she recalls.
“I was asked to travel to Puducherry, Madurai, Thirunelveli, Ramanathapuram, and other places for the same duty. I had never been to some of the places before,” she says.
She also had to find her accommodation, and so do other cops when they have escort duty, but with a lack of network, Nazriya had to book hotel rooms on her own to stay in.
“If the room charge was Rs 500 for others, it was Rs 1000 for me. If it was Rs 1000 for others, it was Rs 2000 for me since I am a trans woman. But I needed a place to bath and change,” she says.
Paying for accommodation, food and sometimes even for travel - as some buses did not accept the bus warrant given by the police station - she had little left from her monthly salary.
Duties of such nature went on for almost a month, all the while Nazriya was asking for someone to relieve her from her duty. When she asked why no one came to relieve her she was told it was Inspector Meenambikai’s instruction to not let anyone relieve her.
“Male cops were relieved of their duty, female cops were relieved of their duty, but no one came to relieve me of my duty. I felt a great deal of loneliness,” she says.
When once again she was allotted a tedious duty after a month of hardship, Nazriya refused to do it. She asked to assign it to someone else as she had to take on 30 duties in December.
“She was being paid more than how much I was being paid. I asked her if she had decided to sit and slack. Because they were crossing their limits,” Nazriya recalls.
Nazriya lives in a commune society with more than a hundred other trans women. One day, when Nazriya was overwhelmed, she broke down to her mother, a trans woman living with her in the commune home. Her mother wanted to talk with the commissioner.
“She doesn’t know how many stars officials have, so she was tricked into believing that the assistant commissioner was the commissioner,” Nazriya says.
The AC had told Nazriya’s mother that this is the nature of the job and that Nazriya has to learn how to cope with the difficulties. This happened at the beginning of January. She then started losing her sleep, she was depressed and hopeless. It resulted in her second suicide bid.
What Unfolded at Commissioner's Office
On January 16, when she was still in a semi-conscious state, Nazriya went to the commissioner's office and had an argument with inspector Meenambikai. The inspector was irked when she crossed her legs while sitting in front of her superior. She was served a memo. She chuckles recalling the incident. The officers subsequently told her that she had tried to jump off the commissioner's office building. When she gained consciousness she was in a hospital. Still agitated, Nazriya went to the commissioner's office from the hospital.
“There were officials around me. I screamed that no one should touch me,” she said firmly.
Even though there were many women officials around her, it was a male official named Sivakumar who, on the pretext of forcing her to vacate the place, touched her inappropriately.
When Nazriya asked him to apologize, the officer pushed her down again. An official from Race Course All Women’s police station had come down to the commissioner’s office to talk to Nazriya
She remembers being in physical pain from the hospital procedures and exploding into tears that day.
The next day, January 17, when she went to the office, she was asked to give a special report on what had happened the day before.
“I did not remember anything, what could I have written?”
She was issued a memo. To make matters worse, her higher-up lodged a false complaint against Nazriya stating that she came to work drunk.
In March, when she went to the office to ask for a 5-day extension on her medical leave - since she was recovering from surgery - she was given another memo. This time it was for a Whatsapp message she had posted narrating the indecent behaviour of the officer.
This turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back. She took all the memos she had received and went to the DC’s office. This time, she decided to submit her resignation.
Need Justice
Meanwhile, Meenambikai had been transferred to the Singanallur crime branch, as she had requested. The SJAP got a new inspector.
“The new inspector is very active and hardworking. It felt like looking at me. She is like me. I like working and I am very good at my work. I can write five current reports in the time others take to complete one report,” she says.
When asked why she decided to quit now, in March and not in January or December when work was hectic for her, she says, “ because I cannot take that the people who wronged me are not punished and that I am punished for demanding justice.”
There are so many unwritten rules in society, like how you are not supposed to cross your legs before an inspector if you are a lower-ranking official, and how you should not post a WhatsApp status criticising an official for harassing you. There are rules to how justice must be asked. Justice can be sought in a manner that cannot hurt the people who hold power. Justice can be asked like how you would ask someone to lend you money - in a humble tone, with a tinge of shame. If you dare yell that you deserve justice, you will be asked to give up your voice.
Nazriya will only return to the office if the officers who harassed her are punished. She is not asking for resources to rehabilitate herself from the trauma she went through. She is asking for justice and she is waiting for an answer.
(Assistance for those having suicidal thoughts is available on TN’s health helpline 104 and Sneha’s suicide prevention helpline 044-24640050)