Rajathi, a 38-year Bharatnatyam dancer and a trans woman was barbarously murdered on February 14, 2019, in a temple where she was a priest, in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi district’s SS Manikapuram area.
She was mercilessly beheaded, inside the sanctum sanctorum of the temple, allegedly by two men, named Maruthu and Snovin, who attacked her with a sickle, beheaded her, and chopped her body into pieces. The two absconded after keeping the decapitated head outside the temple, and the mutilated body inside. According to the police, the priest was performing a puja, when she was attacked by the perpetrators.
Maruthu surrendered in court on the evening of February 18, and a day later his friend Snovin was arrested. The accused have been booked under Section 302 of IPC and the Goondas Act section.
Maruthu, a 23-year-old, and also the main accused owns the land on which the temple stands, but it was Rajathi who looked after it. During the interrogation, he confessed to the crime and revealed that he was in a relationship with Rajathi. The couple had a huge fallout recently, after which he stopped visiting the temple.
An anonymous source from the community told TNM, “He and his brothers own the land where this temple is located. After they fell out, it was just Rajathi who was taking care of the temple affairs. A few days ago, Maruthu learned that she had entered into a relationship with another man. It was following this that the bloodshed took place. Besides this, the five brothers also used to harass Rajathi and the trans women who would come to the temple to pray. When she took over the temple, we feel they feared that the temple would fall into the hands of the trans community,”.
According to the Police, what agitated Maruthu even more, was the fact that Rajathi made a business deal, without consulting him. Few sources from the locality also said that the priest supported the accused financially, by helping him set up a shop outside the temple, and also brought a lorry to transport water. “Later, when she came to know that Maruthu was in a relationship with another woman, she stopped helping him financially and barred him from entering the temple and performing his duties there,” the source said.
The fact that it took police around four days to nab the accused, has irked the transgender community in the district. Questioning the lackadaisical attitude of the police, Grace Banu, founder of Trans Rights Now Collective pointed out that they would have swung into action if the victim had been a cis man or a cis woman.
The transgender community in Thoothukudi has demanded stringent action against the accused. While everyone else in the village has refrained from coming out in Rajathi’s support.