Pinky Pramanik a young girl who hails from Puroli district in West Bengal trumpeted as a heir to the legendary PT Usha was there, for all the good reasons ,in the news in 2006. She had a long list of laurels tagged to her name, a silver in 4x400m at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, gold at both the 2006 Asian Games in the same event and a special feat of triple gold medals at the 2006 SAF Games by winning the 400 and 800 meter events as well as the4x400 relay events. A hamstring injury in a road mishap was the time to call it a day and she retired three years ago.

Falling from the heights now, the Asiad gold medallist is bullied by the police ,the regime and has hogged the media limelight now for all the wrong reasons.

Pinky’s gender is disputed. The poor girl ran barefooted in all her childhood, over-performed during the heats of the tournaments to the envy of her pesky colleagues. All along there was no dispute on her gender. Times Of India(TOI)quotes Mr Maitra ,General secretary of the West Bengal Athletic association as asserting that Pinki underwent many sex determination tests before international competitions and even while being recruited in the Railways. " She now needs a medical certificate to prove that she is a girl. She has been asked to assert her identity which includes establishing her womanhood.

The Baguihati police arrested her on June 14 on a falsely implicated rape case by the athlete's consensual live-in partner, a divorcee and a mother of one. She accused the athlete of being a male who repeatedly "raped and tortured" her. Consequently, a District Court in West Bengal on June 15 ordered her to two weeks judicial custody. A gender determination test was ordered on the athlete. The gender test conducted on June 20 was inconclusive as she was reported to have both male and female reproductive organs. It was a transgender case and the medical board requested the court to carry out two different tests (hormonal and chromosomal) on Pinki at the state-run SSKM hospital. Her chromosome pattern test report is expected to be submitted in the court shortly.

Ms Pramanik has been granted bail by the district and sessions court of the north 24-parganas on the bond of Rs. 5000 and was released after 26 days in a correctional home (West Bengal jail). The bail has been granted on the ground that IPC Section 376 (Punishment for rape) cannot be applied on her. Ms.Pinky Pramanik was suspended from Eastern Railway due to the allegations. Her suspension can only be revoked if the court absolves her of all the charges.

The trauma and the agony, the family had to endure was beyond description. And now, a video clip of her, naked, going through a verification test in a nursing home, has gone viral. The investigation of the charges had become an attack on her self hood. It is pathetic that a strong young girl who fiercely fought poverty and swarm across many odds to blaze the tracks is being treated so inhumanly by the state.

Durgacharan ,her father was quoted by TOI as saying that” As a father I was unfortunate enough to see my daughters nude clip. Hope someday truth will come out and the real guilty will be punished.” Civil rights activists have approached the State’s Human Rights Commission alleging Pramanik was being mistreated by the police. "Prima facie, it's a case of human rights violation. We are awaiting the reports," Justice Ganguly of the State’s Human Rights Commission said.

The treatment meted out to the athlete has attracted criticism from the sporting fraternity as well. "Male police officers have been escorting her and at times dragging her out from police vans. This is absolutely deplorable," former national women's swimming champion Bula Chowdhury was quoted as saying.

The scientific community is skeptical that the gender test is humiliating, socially insensitive, and prone to be inaccurate and ineffective. The testing is especially difficult in the case of people who could be considered intersexual as genetic differences can allow a person to have a male genetic make-up and female anatomy or body chemistry.

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Updates

Pinky reinstated
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Asian Games gold medalist Pinki Pramanik, who was accused of rape by a woman, has been reinstated by Eastern Railway. The athlete rejoined duty as a ticket collector at the Sealdah Station on Thursday.