Source: Women are Human
IN — Delhi. Four male individuals who “wear women’s clothes” stand accused of holding an adolescent boy captive, drugging him and forcing him to undergo ‘gender’ reassignment surgery and consume cross-sex hormones. The child reports he was subjected to years of rape, sexual exploitation and abuse following the procedure. Two of the accused have been arrested, while others are on the lam.
Around three years ago, the 13-year-old attended a dance event in Laxmi Nagar. While there, the boy befriended a group who offered to teach him how to dance.
The group paid the adolescent to participate in dance programs.
According to the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW), after some time passed, the group notified the child that he would have to live and work with them.
Using narcotics, the group kept the child drugged for days before forcing him into ‘gender’ reassignment surgery, the DCW says. Following the operation, the group had the child take cross-sex hormones, the boy has reported.
The group raped the child, and their paying clients regularly came to rape him, the DCW says.
The boy says his captors, who wore feminine clothes, assaulted people to steal their money.
The adolescent also alleges that the gang compelled him to ‘beg like a eunuch’ at traffic signals.
He was warned that he and his family would be killed if he told anyone, the boy says.
The group allegedly kidnapped a second boy who worked as a catering assistant at the venue where the 13-year-old had performed as a dancer.
Last March, the two boys managed to escape the location where they were being held. The mother of the first of the two to have been kidnapped moved both boys into a newly rented home, along with her parents and brothers.
In December, the group allegedly discovered where the former captives were living. Threatening the mother of the teen boy at gunpoint, they recaptured the two boys, the DCW says.
The two boys were then raped by the four captors, according to the DCW.
Two days later, the boys escaped again. A lawyer discovered the boys hiding at the New Delhi train station.
The lawyer brought the boys to the DCW, a statutory body of the Government of Delhi that investigates and examines matters related to the safety and security of women.
Police discouraged the first boy from filing a complaint, warning that he would implicate himself and have to be jailed.
The DCW intervened, having police register a First Information Report (FIR).
Charges in the FIR include child sex abuse.
Featured image courtesy: Pixabay / sippakorn
