When the Delhi High Court ruled last week that consensual gay sex is not a crime, it was a battle only half won for Dilfarash. “The law may have been mended, but it is more important for mindsets to change,” says the 22-year-old bisexual, who works with the crisis intervention team at Sangama, a Bangalore-based non governmental organisation for lesbians, gay, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBT).

On July 2, the high court ruled that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) — which describes homosexual intercourse as “sex against nature” and made it punishable by up to 10 years in prison — violated the constitutional rights of a citizen.

The ruling becomes binding across India, says Siddharth Narrain, a lawyer with the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore. “The Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that if any High Court strikes down a Parliament Act, the decision will be applicable across India,” says Narrain.

Narrain feels the judgement hasn’t come a day too early. “The police have used Section 377 and other laws to harass the transgender community. This needed to be addressed,” he says.

The police, however, deny that they harass homosexuals. “Many homosexuals and transsexuals rob people in the guise of asking for money. The police only take action against such offences,” says Siddaramappa, deputy commissioner of police (DCP), Crime, Bangalore.

Dilfarash does not agree. The activist says he was stripped naked, mocked and beaten by officers at the Bangalore’s Banashankari police station when he went there to get bail for five transgender people last year. An officer at the Banashankari police station, however, says no case was lodged against Dilfarash on October 20 last year. A week later, a case against 31 activists of Sangama was lodged (under Sections 143, 145 and 353) for threatening police officers.

Here’s Dilfarash’s story.

● On October 20 last year, Sangama’s crisis team received a panic call from a transgender person, who said that he had been locked up along with four friends at the Banashankari police station. He said they had been asking for alms at a traffic crossing in the area when the police picked them up. They were beaten in the lock up.

I rushed to the police station. The policeman on duty, a sub inspector, asked me to wait for the Assistant Commissioner of Police, who was out on a patrol.

While I waited at the police station’s reception area, the sub inspector was joined by two more police officers and they began grilling me. They asked me for my name, residential address and my father’s name. I said that since I had gone to the police station as a representative of Sangama, I would only give my office address. But they forced me to provide all the information that they asked for.

When the ACP returned from his patrol, he called me into his cabin. There, I was greeted with a beating. I was told that if I supported the transgender people, I would be implicated in a drug case and thrown into jail for good.

The cops then stripped me and took away my mobile phone and money. I was made to stand with my back to the wall. Then they began asking me a string of humiliating questions. One police officer asked me whether I was a man or a woman. Another asked me if I had sex from the front or the rear. The four officers in the room were doubling up with laughter. I stood there humiliated and angry. But I knew I had to keep quiet if I wanted to be spared another whipping. I was biding time till help arrived.

Before someone from Sangama could reach me, I was booked under Sections 367, 143, 147 and 149 — that is, for gathering outside the police station and causing trouble and not respecting government employees — and put in jail. It took me three days to get bail. The case is dragging on in the city civil court even now.

One week after the incident, Sangama held a protest rally outside the Banashankari police station against the police officials’ excesses. I wrote to the Human Rights Commissioner about what had happened to me. But no action was taken against the ACP and his juniors. They continue to be posted at the same police station.

This wasn’t the first time I was detained in jail. I was a sex worker before I was rehabilitated and joined Sangama. We had to pay money to the beat inspector every week. Once, I didn’t find any work for two weeks and had no money to pay the cops. But this was no excuse for them. I was beaten by the police officer and spent a night in jail without any charges. I had no one to turn to for help.

A transgender friend who also worked as a sex worker was similarly picked up by the police for not paying his weekly dues. In the lock up, he asked the officer on duty for food. The cop threw rice and sambar on the floor and forced him to eat it.

When I joined Sangama, I realised that I wasn’t the only one with a tale of police violence to tell. The NGO’s crisis team gets about 20 to 30 cases of police harassment against transgenders, gays and bisexuals every month. We intervene and try and get justice for all the victims. But sometimes it is difficult to cut through a system that is fiercely anti-homosexual.

To change mindsets, Sangama is conducting sensitisation programmes at police stations across Bangalore. We visit one police station every month and talk to the officials about the psychological and emotional processes that make some people queer. We urge them not to target transgenders and tell them that homosexuals are also normal people.

The Delhi High Court judgement may have made homosexuality legal, but the LGBT community will become completely integrated only when they get social acceptance. Police officers who target us are a symptom of the social disapproval of homosexuality. Gays and lesbians need to be accepted by everybody.