Transgender Defeats Prejudices To Become India’s First Policewoman

Madras HC has directed Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board to appoint a transgender as Sub Inspector.

First Transgender Policewoman Sub Inspector K Prithika Yashini (right) at Madras High Court in Chennai on Friday. (Photo: PTI)

The Madras High Court has directed Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board (TNUSRB) to appoint a transgender as Sub Inspector of police as she is entitled to get the job.

The transgender K Prithika Yashini’s application for the post was initially rejected, following which she moved the High Court.

Yashini cited a Supreme Court judgement wherein it was ordered that the state and central governments must take steps to treat transgenders as socially and educationally backward citizens and extend to them all kinds of reservation in the admissions to educational institutions and public appointments.

The first bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Pushpa Sathyanarayana, also directed the TNUSRB to include transgenders as a “third category” by the next recruitment process is carried out.

The court had on 7 September ordered authorities to permit her to participate in the viva voce, subject to certain conditions.

The bench said today that the discrimination suffered by transgenders would be difficult for any of the other two genres to realise.

“The present case is one where the petitioner was categorised as man, though she was a female. She had undergone sufferance of an exit from her house without parental protection. It is in these difficult circumstances that the petitioner has been endeavouring to eke out a living,” the bench said.