Public spaces are often constructed around particular notions of “appropriate” codes of conduct which exclude those who do not conform to heteronormative ideals. In India, queer persons, especially those belonging to socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, experience hostility in public spaces and often start avoiding those spaces altogether. Further, there are certain laws that interact with other forms of societal censure to produce a climate of oppression where safe areas, in contrast, are marked off by lack of detection and relative freedom from the law. By making queer identities invisible, it is understood that the sexual ‘others’ have no claims or lesser claims to citizenship alongside the ‘good’, law abiding, heterosexual subjects. In this sense, questions of gender and sexual identity can be seen to intertwine with those of citizenship in a number of profound ways for queer persons are often reduced to being ‘partial citizens’. This paper will look at how certain laws in India intersect with informal methods of social censure to produce a regime that has a disenfranchising impact on queer persons’ access to public spaces, and largely, their citizenship.