Madras High Court Asks Tamil Nadu to Set Up Transgender Welfare Scheme
Granting bail to a YouTuber whose video about a transwoman’s self-immolation had landed him in police crosshairs, the Madras High Court has used the same order to ask Tamil Nadu to put together a welfare scheme for transgender persons — at the taluk level, not just the state.
The video showed a transwoman setting herself on fire outside a police station. She later died. Her death, the order records, was a protest against the detention of two other transgender persons inside.
Justice KK Ramakrishnan, who heard the petition, has given the State Chief Secretary until July 26 to file a compliance report.
What the case was actually about
Two other transgender persons had been picked up by police, on what officers called counselling and what their supporters described as harassment. The complaints, according to the police, were about begging at traffic signals and approaching commuters for money. Whether that account fully squared with what happened on the ground is a question the order does not try to settle.
The YouTuber’s video, which had made the rounds online, accused the police of targeting transgender persons and quietly building dossiers on them. The State argued the video was misleading and was stoking public anger without basis. Fearing arrest, the YouTuber went to the High Court for anticipatory bail.
For the petitioner, Advocates Thayumanasundaram and K Bhuvaneshwaran appeared. Government Advocate (Criminal Side) P Kottaichamy appeared for the State.
Bail granted
After watching the disputed video, Justice Ramakrishnan held that the case against the petitioner came down to retransmission of material already in public circulation. He granted anticipatory bail, with conditions.
Most bail orders end there. This one did not.
The judge wrote that the self-immolation had shocked judicial conscience. He went further. The stigma that hangs over transgender lives in Tamil Nadu, he said, has reduced people in the community to begging on the streets, or to work that drifts towards the edge of legality, simply to put food on the table.
“The tragedy is not in their birth,” the bench observed, “it is in the blindness of society.”
Transgender persons, the order added, are equally children of god, equally entitled to a place in their families, in society, and in the country’s larger life. It was no part of judicial duty to sit in theological judgment over the Creator. A society’s want of patience could not become a reason to deny dignity to a class of citizens.
NALSA, more than a decade on
Justice Ramakrishnan returned, again and again, to the Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India. The judgment recognised transgender persons as a third gender and laid out a welfare framework. Eleven years later, the bench said, that framework remains largely on paper.
That gap, in the court’s reading, is one the judiciary cannot leave alone. Where the social compact has failed to hold, and where compassion has been promised but not built, the bench said it could not stay a silent observer.
The deadline
The scheme the order asks for must do three things: open up self-employment, sustain a steady livelihood, and bring transgender persons into the everyday life of the community. The Chief Secretary has been put in charge of pulling together work across departments.
The compliance report is due July 26. What ends up in the scheme — and whether anything actually shifts on the ground after the deadline — will set the terms of the next hearing.
