How Uttar Pradesh’s trans community Is locked out of legal aid

Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh: When transgender victims of violence in Kanpur try to report a crime, they rarely find anyone from their own community on the other side of the police desk or inside the legal aid offices meant to help them.

More than a decade after the Supreme Court’s landmark NALSA judgment mandated equal access to justice, Kanpur has yet to appoint even one transgender paralegal volunteer (PLV). The result: trans persons continue to face police apathy, legal alienation, and social stigma with most choosing silence over struggle.

Paralegal Volunteers (PLVs) are meant to be the first link between vulnerable citizens and the justice system. Appointed under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, PLVs help people understand their legal rights, assist in filing complaints, and connect them with free legal aid through district-level legal services authorities.

But for Uttar Pradesh’s transgender community, this support system largely leaves them out. Despite clear directions from the Supreme Court’s 2014 NALSA judgment, which recognised transgender persons as the third gender and mandated their inclusion in welfare and legal mechanisms, most districts in the state, including Kanpur, have yet to appoint even a single transgender PLV.

According to the Uttar Pradesh State Legal Services Authority website, Kanpur currently has five registered PLVs, none from the transgender community. When 101Reporters contacted the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA), officials declined to explain the absence of transgender representation, saying only that appointments were made “as required.”

Why representation matters

Advocate Ratnesh Kumar Tiwari of the District Sessions Court in Unnao said most lawyers remain unfamiliar with the lived realities and legal challenges of the transgender community. “After studying law, lawyers usually take up civil or criminal practice,” he said. “We are rarely trained to understand the issues specific to the third gender. So when someone from the community approaches us, we often end up refusing their cases, not out of bias, but because of a lack of understanding.”

Without trans PLVs, community members face a double barrier: police indifference at the time of reporting, and legal alienation afterward. As a result, many victims of violence or harassment never pursue justice at all.

In Kanpur, Anuj Pandey, 23, has been trying to change that. A transgender rights activist and founder of the Kanpur Queer Welfare Foundation, Anuj began the organisation to help community members access basic rights from identity documents and medical care to legal support.

Having faced harassment himself since school, Anuj says the motivation was deeply personal. “Wherever I went to complain, at school, in the neighbourhood, or later at workplaces — I was made to feel like the problem,” he said. “That’s when I realised our fight begins inside our homes and extends to every institution.”

Through the Foundation, Anuj works with 600-700 transgender persons across Kanpur and nearby districts. But despite progress, he says most trans victims of violence or harassment still hesitate to approach the police.

“Whenever someone from our community faces abuse, physical or mental, we think twice before filing a case,” he said. “Families fear social stigma, police don’t take the complaints seriously, and if we insist, the police try to drag the family into the matter too. Most victims end up withdrawing their complaints out of fear or shame.”

Case study

One such case is that of Abhay Malik (name changed), a BBA student from Kanpur’s Kidwai Nagar area. Abhay had been using dating apps for years when, three years ago, a meeting turned violent.

“A boy I met on the app invited me to his place,” Abhay recalled. “On the way, he said we’d take a shortcut. He stopped in a secluded area, where his friends were already waiting. They started harassing me, beating me, tearing my clothes, and took my money and phone.”

After being assaulted, Abhay managed to call the police for help. “They came, took a written complaint, and said they’d investigate,” he said. “But I didn’t follow up. I told my family it was an accident, I was scared they’d find out the truth and blame me. I knew if I pushed for action, the police would involve my family and make it worse. So I stayed silent.”

He still shudders recalling the incident. “The police take crimes against women seriously,” Abhay said, “but when it happens to a trans person, they question you, not the attackers. Many of us choose silence because reporting brings more humiliation than justice.”

A broken system

Anuj Pandey said such silence is common. “It has been more than ten years since the NALSA judgment,” he said. “But the ground reality hasn’t changed. Trans people are still fighting to be heard by the law, the police, and even the institutions meant to help us.”

The Uttar Pradesh Transgender Welfare Board, set up in 2021 with 23 members, was supposed to monitor welfare schemes and representation. But its three-year term has lapsed, and it has not been reconstituted. “If we don’t get justice from the police or the legal system, where do we go?” Anuj asked.

For Kiran Nayak, a trans and disabled paralegal volunteer and award-winning activist, the solution lies in representation. “Trans people should know they have the right to become PLVs,” she said. “They can approach the DLSA and ask for training. That’s how vulnerable communities can stand up for themselves.”

Nayak added that the trust within the trans community makes them uniquely positioned to support each other. “The system can intimidate or ignore you, but a trans PLV can offer empathy and real help. Awareness is the first step, once people know they can claim that space, change begins.”

When asked whether community members in Kanpur are aware of this right, Anuj shook his head. “The recruitment notices for PLVs still say ‘men and women can apply.’ There’s no mention of the third gender. Many feel left out because the language itself excludes us.”

He recounted his own experience trying to apply. “I wanted to become a PLV myself,” he said. “I visited the local court several times, waited hours to meet the judge, but the meeting never happened. After some time, I gave up. But I haven’t stopped believing it’s possible — we just need the system to open its doors.”

For now, that door remains closed. The laws exist, the judgments have been passed, and the directives are written, but the bridge between them and lived reality is still missing.

Until transgender persons can find representation within the justice system, as PLVs, as legal officers, as trusted voices, the promise of “law is equal for all” will remain, for them, only a line on paper.

(Sumit Yadav is a freelance journalist and a member of 101Reporters.) 

This story has been produced by 101Reporters, an independent news agency with a network of 3,000+ freelance journalists across the country, in collaboration with Crime & Punishment, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.