Kolkata:
Pinki Pramanik, the former Asian Games gold medalist athlete in the eye of a gender storm, says she is being pushed by the police to commit suicide. Ever since the police filed a chargesheet on Monday accusing her of being male and raping her live-in partner, the question over her gender has become fodder for public speculation and life, for her, has become traumatised.
"When I was charged by the police, I felt the police was provoking me to commit suicide. Sometimes I am thinking of committing suicide, only because of the police. When I go out somewhere, people stare at me like I am a freak. I feel terrible," Pinki told NDTV.
On Monday, the police charged the former athlete, who won gold in the 4x400 metres relay at the 2006 Doha Asian Games, with raping her live-in partner. The charge was based apparently on a medical report which they claimed said Pinki was male and capable of intercourse. At least that is what the assistant public prosecutor Santomoy Bose told reporters.
But doctors who filed the report say otherwise. They had said Pinki was not female, but "simultaneously she cannot be termed a male".
Dr BN Kahali, who headed the investigation, said Pinki suffered from DSD or Disorder of Sex Development and could best be described as a male pseudo-hermaphrodite. Whether she was capable of committing rape was not the purview of the medical board, he said.
Gender and sports expert Dr Poyoshni Mitra says both police and doctors have done great injustice to Pinki. "There is no understanding, not only of intersex conditions by the police and other govt officers, but even from the side of medical board which seems incapable. They are terming it to be a case of hermaphroditism but that's a term discarded a long time ago."
With the gender controversy now a public fodder, Pinki is totally traumatised. The athlete is not living in her own house or taking public transport. While Pinki's colleagues at work have been supportive, public reaction on the streets has made the athlete sick.
"I feel like a joker in a circus," said Pinki.
Pinki is now considering writing to chief minister Mamata Banerjee for help.