Sex-reassignment surgery: Bombay HC to hear Beed constable's plea on Nov 30

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court will eventually hear a plea by a woman constable from Beed who wants permission for leave to undergo a sex-reassignment surgery (SRS), on November 30.
Lalita Salve's matter, scheduled for Monday, shuttled between benches as it was sought to be reassigned to a bench that hears service matters.
The writ petition was to come up before a bench of Justices S S Kemkar and Girish Kulkarni, but Salve’s lawyer Ejaz Naqvi was told that since it is a ‘service issue’, it will have to go before a bench headed by Justice S C Dharmadhikari.
Salve had moved the HC last week as the police top brass had declined her request for a month’s leave to undergo SRS. She was recruited as a woman police constable, but her September plea for leave and request to continue service as a male constable post surgery was rejected on November 20, by the police department.
When advocate Naqvi tried to mention her plea citing urgency before a bench headed by Justice
Dharmadhikari, he was asked which service Salve was in.
The court said if it is a service matter of an employer-employee, the advice would be to go be Maharashtra administrative tribunal (MAT). But Naqvi said it was not a simple service issue. On the contrary it was an issue of “personal liberties’’ of Salve (an employee in police service).
It was an issue of fundamental right to life and privacy, he said. “A right to undergo such a surgery to choose a gender would fall under right to life. All she wants is to lead a respectable life, sans any stigma," he said later.
The court suggested that he look for another appropriate bench. Naqvi later said that the matter filed against director general of police, Maharashtra state, has now been listed by the HC to come on November 30 for hearing before an appropriate bench.
Born Lalita Salve, the 29-year-old constable had last month got her name ‘notarised’ as Lalit.
The police department denied her the permission as it said she would then fall two centimeters short in height as a male constable. When she qualified as a female recruit, her height was appropriate.
She said the doctors who examined her found that she suffers from a gender dysphoria with presence of ‘y’ chromosomes found in males.
Her petition said he had developed “transsexual symtoms" for the last three years and was attracted towards people of the same gender. A ‘y’ chromosomal status in her genes led to her state of ‘social stigma’ as she lived with a mental trauma of knowing she was trapped in a wrong body.
With the department not supporting her even after medical tests showed she was suffering from ‘gender dysphoria type abnormality’, she set out to treat it herself. Doctors adviced her to undergo a sex-reassignment surgery and her plea is for judicial intervention to help her out.