Visakhapatnam: The city traffic police have been receiving strange complaints from people to solve the extortion of transgenders at traffic junctions in the city. The transgender people locally known as hijras, had been collecting toll at traffic points targeting bikes, cars and also some times the private and RTC buses and sometimes by force. A traffic sub-inspector S. Ramesh said that they have been receiving several complaints from motorists against the unpredictable toll plazas in the form of the eunuchs at various traffic junctions.
Mr Ramesh said that they also observed that the transgender in groups verbally abusing the motorists who refuse to pay. “We are helpless and have no option but to pay the toll to avoid harassment and public nuisance. We don’t know who is behind the extortion by transgenders at various traffic junctions, wine shops and also at public parks,” says K. Siva Kumar, a motorist.
Transgenders can be seen in groups at Satyam Junction, Gurudwara Junction, NAD Junction, Gajuwaka and few other areas in the city. The transgenders have their own areas, set rules in money collection and supremacy exercise, he added. Sources said that the hijras under the leadership of few persons indulge in begging and others forcibly extract money ranging from Rs 10 to Rs 100 from motorists and Rs 100 to Rs 500 from the owners of the business establishment. If denied, they become abusive and even violent, as most of them come drunk.
A senior police officer in the traffic wing said that they will form special teams with plain clothes cops to check the menace of the transgenders at the traffic junctions besides issuing stringent warning to the people behind the extortion, he added.
