Boby has lost track of the precise number of times she has been gang-raped. She thinks it is between eight and 10. “Every time it has been without condom,” she says. “Every time I was badly beaten.”

As a trans sex worker in India’s capital city Delhi, the smiling, unabashed 25-year-old lives under a constant threat of HIV infection which she can only do so much to control.

She speaks to The Independent at the Samarth clinic, an outwardly unassuming centre on the outskirts of the capital run by the India HIV/AIDS Alliance and supported by the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

Samarth’s goal is to target communities that have been missed by the behemoth of India’s public anti-Aids operation. For while the country as a whole reports a relatively low prevalence rate of just 0.2 per cent, that rises to 7.4 per cent among transgender women.

Boby first started to identify as a woman at the age of 12, but living in a small town in northern Himachal Pradesh state she didn’t know anyone else who felt the same. Read more via the Independent