The police are on the lookout for a man accused of assaulting a transgender student at Palarivattom on Friday night.
A complaint was lodged with the police on Saturday following which a case was registered. The police have invoked Sections 341 (wrongful restrain), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 427 (mischief causing damage to the amount of Rs. 50) and 500 (defamation) of the Indian Penal Code against the accused.
“The accused was reportedly in an inebriated state. The complainant has given us a video of the accused based on which we are trying to track him,” said Palarivattom Sub Inspector S. Sanal.
The incident took place near Federal Bank at Palarivattom when V.S. Rana, a student pursuing B.A. Malayalam at Maharaja’s College, was out for having dinner with her guardian Sajna Shaji and friend Aswathy, both transgender individuals.
Scooter damaged
As per the complaint, a person misbehaved with Rana by making a sexual innuendo and when Sajna interfered he smashed the indicator of their scooter.
“He grabbed my hand and tore Aswathy’s clothes. He then hit me on the neck and took to heels. We chased him to recover the cost of damage to the scooter,” said Rana. “But the public had turned against us and blamed us for the situation. An executive with a food aggregator threatened us with physical harm even as another groped me,” said Rana. She said another person went live on Facebook and defamed her by portraying her as a sex worker.
“In our statement, we have complained against four persons and if the First Information Report is registered against only one person we will demand for it to be re-written. We have a video of the person who smashed the motorcycle indicators and the one who grabbed me,” said Rana.