http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20040314/haryana.htm#6

Eunuch, accomplice get remand in castration case

Our Correspondent

Hisar, March 13

The Judicial Magistrate, Mr Parveen Kumar, today remanded an eunuch and her accomplice in judicial custody for 14 days in connection with a case of castration.

The local police had produced Jhanjhar and Jaggi, residents of Budhladha town in Punjab, in the court today after arresting both from Punjab. The court also issued arrest warrants against another eunuch, Chameli, a resident of Faridkot in Punjab, Darshan Singh of Budhlada and Dr K.K. Shrivastva, a resident of Farukhabad in Uttar Pardesh, in this connection.

A local youth, Bal Krishan of nearby Mangali village, had alleged that Jhanjhar, Darshan and Jaggi had castrated him with the help of Dr K.K. Shrivastva after kidnapping him from his village last year. After this they sold him to another eunuch, Chameli, for Rs 85,000.

Later, the youth escaped from the house of Chameli on the night of February 9 and reached here. He met the local Sub-Divisional Magistrate in this regard, who sent him to the local Civil Surgeon for medical examination, which confirmed the alleged castration.

He has also written to the Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and Director-Generals of Police of Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pardesh in this regard.

I have mixed thoughts about this case from last March. It’s been six months since this article appeared. I have not been able to find any further discussion of the case – which may indicate that it was dropped. There have long been tales of the Hijra castrating boys against their will in order to recruit them. So far I have not been able to track down corroboration for a single instance. Either the trail of the story eventually disappears or a final resolution is that the newly castrated Hijra had regrets for her decision to join the sect and claimed forcible recruitment as more socially acceptable.

From the great number of Hijra in India (estimates from reasonably good sources run from 500,000 to 1,200,000) one would expect that there should be a variety of tales and legends about recruitment and regret. That some such tales should involve forced castration is to be expected. That no such tale that I have been able to track appears to be true I find to be strong evidence that they can be dismissed as probably untrue.

Before the last self-destruct of the Eunuch Archive server (sending all previous posts up in smoke), I posted on the Archive a legal case of supposed forced castration of a Hijra that sounds somewhat parallel to this one.

The story was the cover story of the November 19, 1962 issue of AsiaWeek. The cover was a large color photo of Mohamed Hanif Vora, a 15 year-old eunuch dressed in a colorful sari. His story was that he had been forcibly castrated by a band of Hijra. The story, including several additional photos and a couple of related stories about eunuchs, took up seven pages inside the magazine.

Since that article disappeared from the Archive a couple of years ago, I just re-posted it on the Nonfiction Board as Troubled Twilight World (http://www.eunuch.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=34324).

It was difficult to track down in the Indian press, but the ultimate resolution of the story that Mohamed finally gave during police questioning was that he had run away from home and had joined a band of Hijra. He voluntarily joined the group by being castrated. He then had second thoughts and regrets and made up the story of forcibly castration in an attempt to gain sympathy from his family when he returned to them. The police attention was definitely unwelcome.