ThePrint reports on how LGBT Muslims support one another in Kashmir

On 28 October 2026, the Indian news outlet ThePrint published a report on how LGBT Muslims in Srinagar, in Indian-administered Kashmir, find support through the Sonzal Welfare Trust. Reporter Sagrika Kissu spoke to the trust’s founder, Aijaz Ahmad Bund, and people who had turned to him for help.

According to ThePrint, Bund made the trust’s Instagram page public after local residents responded to a video he had posted publicly about LGBT people in Kashmir. By the time the report appeared, the page’s following had grown from about 1,000 to more than 6,000. Some people wrote to meet others or ask for help. Bund said he had also received hostile messages, including death threats.

One person interviewed by ThePrint said he approached the trust when he wondered whether he could be gay and remain a practising Muslim. Talking to Bund helped him work through his doubts, he said. He still prays five times a day. In another case, according to Bund, the father of a teenager who sought help tried to change his son’s sexual orientation and worried about how he would get married.

The trust was registered in 2017. According to the organisation CREA, it provides counselling and legal aid and helps people develop job skills. In December 2024 the trust launched Bund’s book Unlocking Closet in Srinagar, about the experiences of gay, lesbian and bisexual Muslims in Kashmir.

Uránia previously reported on the opening of a centre run by LGBT Muslim organisation Al-Ghurbaah in a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa.