CHENNAI: In a precedent-setting verdict, the Madras high court asked the state government to reinstate a police constable who was dismissed after medical tests determined she was a transgender.

Stating that transgenders require empathy and not just sympathy from society, Justice S Nagamuthu said their progress should not be frustrated. In her submissions to the court, Sukanya (name changed) said doctors assigned her sexual identity as female after she was born in October 1989 and this was registered in her birth certificate. She was admitted to school as a girl and won awards in sports event and represented the state as a woman athlete.

Nagalakshmi participated in selection trials conducted by the Uniformed Services Recruitment Board for women police constables and was selected. The state police on February,16, 2013 appointed her as constable. Before her training started, police officers made her undergo a medical examination at Thanjavur Medical College. A team of six doctors certified that she was medically fit, Sukanaya said.

During training in Villupuram, officers sent her for a medical checkup that included a gender test. The doctor issued a certificate stating that Sukanya was a pseudohermaphrodite or a transgender. The principal of the training school informed her parents that she was not a woman, Sukanya said.

She was put to “intolerable mental agony, ridicule and torture” over her gender. The principal also forced her to write her resignation in which she was made to state that she wanted to quit because she had a cardiac problem, Sukanya said.

The state police accepted her resignation on March 8, 2013. She then moved the Madras high court, seeking that it direct the state to reinstate her. The superintendent of police, Thanjavur, said in a counter affidavit that there had been no “malafide intentions” for removing Sukanya and she resigned of her “own volition”.

Justice S Nagamuthu said Sukanya was born as a female and recognised as a woman by society. But she was “misbranded” as a transsexual. “Whether such a finding about sexual identity based on medical examination by a doctor can be accepted is debatable,” the judge said.