Pakistani police arrest two men for slaying and dismembering transgender woman
Transgender advocacy group says the victim, Nazo, is the 62nd trans person to be murdered in the province since 2015
Last week, Pakistani police in the city of Peshawar announced the arrests of two men accused of torturing, murdering, and dismembering a transgender woman.
Peshawar Capital City Police announced the arrests via Twitter on Aug. 17, the day after the murder occurred, writing: “Brutal murder of a Transgender. #Peshawar Police jumped into action. Traced the case, arrested the accused, recovered the pistol and dagger used in the murder. Peshawar Police always firmly stands by the victims and especially the vulnerable groups like Transgenders.”
Brutal murder of a Transgender
#Peshawar Police jumped into action. Traced the case, arrested the accused, recovered the pistol and dagger used in the murder.Peshawar Police always firmly stands by the victims and especially the vulnerable groups like Transgenders pic.twitter.com/mJskT56ot2
— Peshawar Police (@PeshawarCCPO) August 17, 2018
Police Superintendent Cantt Waseem Riaz told the newspaper Dawn that the victim, known as Nazo, had been tortured and shot dead the night before. Her body was then hacked into pieces and placed in a shopping bag.
Riaz told the newspaper that a patrolman had stopped one of the suspects carrying the shopping bag, and asked to inspect it, only to discover that it contained mutilated human body parts.
The first suspect, identified as Mohammad Farooq of Munkarow village, was arrested. He told police that an accomplice, Sadaqat, had killed Nazo, a transgender woman, and cut her body into pieces so that he could dispose of it easily.
Police then arrested Sadaqat and recovered the weapons that had been used in the murder.
While being interrogated, Sadaqat told police that Nazo had long been his friend, but he murdered her when she befriended other people.
TransAction Pakistan, a transgender advocacy group, condemned the murder and said Nazo’s death marked the 62nd killing of a transgender person in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province since 2015, reports Radio Free Europe.
TransAction Pakistan also claims that there were at least 1,133 violent crimes committed against members of the transgender community in the province from 2015 to 2017.
Since Nazo’s murder, there has been yet another attack against a transgender woman, who was reportedly beaten in her home in the city of Mansehra by a man named Bilal and several of his relatives. Dawn reports that the woman sustained several bruises and sought treatment at a local hospital. But Bilal’s mother says her son is the victim in the incident. She claims that he was “lured” into spending time with the transgender woman and other transgender people, despite his mother’s repeated warnings to them to stay away from her son.
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