Transgender Prisoners to Be Categorised Separately in NCRB Data

The Centre told the Delhi HC that transgender persons will now be included under a separate gender in the NCRB data.

By not assigning a proper sex to the prison inmates, who may be transgenders, the plea claimed there cannot be a proper guarantee of their civil rights.

(Photo: The Quint)

The Centre on Monday, 7 December, told the Delhi High Court that data on transgender persons will now be recorded separately in the National Crime Records Bureau's Prison Statistics Report, reported Bar and Bench.

The response was in connection with a plea filed by journalist Karan Tripathi, through the Alliance Law Group that contends that more than six years have elapsed since the Supreme Court verdict, which gave legal recognition to transgenders, yet the NCRB, under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), has failed to reasonably classify transgenders as a separate third gender in its annual publication of the Prison Statistics India report.

By not assigning a proper sex to the prison inmates, who may be transgenders, the plea claimed there cannot be a proper guarantee of their civil rights, constitutional rights and even basic human rights, thereby breaching the very tenets of the Constitution and the basis of the top court judgment.

The plea has argued that till date, only two genders appear in the report and the third gender is excluded. The petitioner has made the MHA and the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment parties in the plea.

The plea cited that central jails have transgender prisoners, as affirmed in the responses to the RTIs filed by the petitioner. However, the data on transgender prisoners finds no mention in the Prison Statistics India report of 2019 published by NCRB.

The petitioner has contended that in complete violation of Article 14 of the Constitution, the NCRB has arbitrarily and unreasonably abstained from publishing separate data on the third gender in the sex-wise classification of Prison Statistics in India since 2014.

(With inputs from Bar and Bench, IANS)