Third murder in three days? A hijira's body was found near Nelamangala highway under mysterious circumstances today morning. An NGO has filed a police complaint that the hijira was murdered. It accused the police of trying to pass it off as suicide.

Puttalakshmi (30) is alleged to have been raped and murdered. Her body was found 10 metres away from the Nelamangala highway. Some people saw the body and informed the police and local NGO Suraksha, which works for AIDS awareness.

"We saw the body. She seems to have been raped and then killed. We suspect she was thrown out of a moving vehicle. Her stomach and legs have wounds. There is mud inside her fingernails. She seems to have struggled before dying. We have seen many such cases before and can identify if it's a murder or a suicide," said Mangesh, coordinator of Suraksha.
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Some members of the hijira community too are asking the police to hush up the case. "Hijiras stand by their people only when they earn for them. Once they are dead, they don't want to do anything for them. They don't want to be questioned by the police. So they also want the case to be closed as a suicide," said Anand, another coordinator of Suraksha.

The NGO has lodged a complaint with the police, after which the body was sent for postmortem.
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When MiD DAY contacted Nelamangala police, they denied knowledge of any such incident even when the NGO workers were protesting outside the police station. "No such incident has come to my notice," said inspector A P Raja. When we again called the station landline, a constableu00a0said that a suicide of a hijira was reported.

On Monday, a retired IISc professor, his wife and mentally retarded son were found murdered in their house in RT Nagar. On Tuesday, an assistant sub-inspector's son was hacked to death in broad daylight in Jayanagar.