Julfikar Ali Manik reported from Dhaka, and Ellen Barry from New Delhi.
DHAKA, Bangladesh — In an
alleyway off a marketplace
specializing in meat and live chickens, up a
few narrow,
precipitous flights of cement stairs, can be
found the most
sought-after transgender
crime fighter in Bangladesh.
Reporters from newspapers
and television stations are
combing Dhaka looking for
her, and so are police officials,
who said they would like to
give her an award for bravery.
But since Monday, when she
nabbed two suspects in the
killing of a blogger ,
the woman, Labannya Hijra,
21 — who takes her last
name from the South Asian term
for biological males who
identify as women — has melted
back into the city where
she has been invisible for so long.
After three days of
searching, a reporter found her on
Thursday, and she agreed to
tell her story publicly for the
first time. She was willing
to speak only after her mentor,
another hijra named Sapna
Hijra, granted her permission.
The blogger, Oyasiqur
Rhaman, 27, was attacked by three
young men, who had
reportedly been ordered to kill him for
writing comments critical
of Islam on social media.
Ms. Hijra grabbed the
T-shirts of the fleeing men, who
were students. As they
struggled in her grasp, a machete
fell out of one man’s bag
and clattered to the ground.
One of the men whacked at
her hand and shouted at her to
let him go, and she yelled
back, “Shut up!”
“We in the hijra community,
we don’t want any terrorist
activity in this society,”
she said. “We want an environment
where each and every
person, including hijras, can move
around the city safely.”
It is surprising that
anyone intervened after Monday’s brutal
attack, not least a member
of a marginalized minority.
After months of violent
political protests and deteriorating
security, Dhaka has become
a place where witnesses prefer
to forget. On Feb. 26, a
group of young men killed Avjit Roy ,
an atheist Bangladeshi-American blogger and
author, on a
crowded street as he left a
book fair.
“Not less than 10 to 12
people saw the attack,” said the victim’s
father, Ajoy Roy, but the
police were unable to get useful
descriptions from
witnesses. “Either they are not interested
or they could not find
them.”
The Dhaka Tribune reported
on Tuesday that locals were
reluctant to chase Mr.
Rhaman’s killers. Ms. Hijra said she
caught two of the men as
they ran past her, pursued by police
officers and civilians.
When the police caught up to her, they
arrested the men, and Ms.
Hijra made herself scarce. The third suspect escaped.
She hesitated to come
forward, fearing that the killers’
associates would remember
her face. She considered fleeing
to the village where she
grew up.
But over the next several
days, she began to notice that,
even without identifying
herself, she was getting an
unusual degree of respect.
“Some people, when they see
me, they say, ‘You did a
fantastic job, you grabbed
the terrorists,’ ” she said.
“So there is some new appreciation of our
hijra
community.”
Transgender people occupy
an unusual social stratum in
South Asia, where
conservative societies still consider
same-sex intercourse to be
a crime but also allow the
existence of a third gender
— a well-established category
that dates back to the age
of the “Kama Sutra.” Nepal,
Pakistan, Bangladesh and
India have all legally recognized the
existence of a third
gender, including on passports and
other official documents.
Ms. Hijra recognized
herself as a hijra as a child, and left
home at 9 in the company of
an older transgender woman.
In Dhaka, she joined a
rigidly hierarchical commune
headed by Sapna Hijra, whom
she refers to as “guru-ma,”
or revered leader. They
make their living by a traditional,
low-stakes protection
scheme: asking shopkeepers for
small sums of money and
creating a noisy racket on the
street outside if they
refuse. The business model depends
heavily on the belief that hijras have the
power to invoke curses.
She lives in a tin-roofed
shanty and earns about $4 a day
begging.
“We don’t have a normal
life; we are not normal human
beings,” she said.
“Sometimes I hate myself when I think
I am a hijra.”
But on the other hand, she
said, “many people love us,
because we are helpless and
deprived.”
On Thursday, speaking about
the attack in the presence
of her guru, Ms. Hijra was
asked whether she would
appear in person to accept
congratulations from the
police. She looked
expectantly at Sapna Hijra, who
said, “Why not?”
“Yes, I can expect to
receive an award,” Ms. Hijra
said happily. “I grabbed
two terrorists.”
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