Bypassing several road-blocks, a 29-year-old has finally attained the status of male constable in Central Industrial Security Forces (CISF) after joining the service as a woman in 2008.
Six years after undergoing a surgery for sex change, reported the Hindustan Times, the constable had to endure multiple medical tests and tough physical exercises that are reserved for male staff to convince the bosses of his masculinity.
Three medical boards of the CISF, Central Reserve Police Force and All india Institute of Medical Science cleared him as a male constable "after four years of bureaucratic vacillation in absence of a precedence and multiple fitness and gender tests," reported the paper.
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The constable, who hails from Bihar- had married a woman colleague six years ago after undergoing the surgery."Had same-sex marriage been allowed in India I would have not undergone sex-change," he told the paper.
It still continues to be a criminal offence for two consenting adult gay, bisexual and transgender persons to marry in India. Lesbian women are not criminalized under Sec. 377 as it criminalizes only ‘penile non-vaginal sex’. However, lesbian women are frequently persecuted and prosecuted under false cases of kidnapping or theft offences, when partners elope.
The operation that costed him a bomb, left him with all the visible features of a male- a muscular body, a moustache and a deep baritone.
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"Since my childhood I always treated myself as a boy and had decided not to marry ever because in that case I would have to marry a man," he was quoted as saying to the paper. Not just the society's glare, even working was not a cake-walk for him.
"I was posted for frisking duty of female passengers in Delhi metro. I was hesitant and told my seniors I should not be doing this as I consider myself a male,” he said. But his women colleagues did not consider him a woman and complained against sharing their barracks with him.
