Athlete Pinki Pramanik said here on Tuesday that it is offensive when the police or an additional public prosecutor comments on her gender in public.
“It is not for the police or an additional public prosecutor to make repeated remarks on my gender,” Pinki told The Hindu , a day after an additional public prosecutor claimed that she was a male, as stated in a medical report. Charges of rape were brought against her in the charge sheet submitted before a court in Barasat in the State’s North 24 Parganas district.
“There is a circus going on and I am being treated as a joker,” she said, adding that she felt that she was being treated as an “object of curiosity” because of the repeated references to her gender. “I find it difficult to come out of my home and walk on the roads,” she said.
Ever since her arrest on June 14, 2012 after the woman she shared her home with accused her of rape, she has been harassed by the police, and now the remarks on her gender come as a “mental torture”, Pinki said. “All they [police] want is to finish me.” Pinki added that she was “ being cornered in such a manner that I am pushed into losing my self-esteem and [contemplating] taking my life.”
“I also hear reports that the police is saying that all my medals will be taken away. Who are they to say so? The police has not awarded me those medals,” she said.
Pinki said that she would approach the West Bengal Commission for Women. She claimed that despite approaching the court in September seeking reports of the medical investigations to ascertain her gender, she had not received them yet.
The athlete underwent medical examination at two State-run hospitals after the allegations of rape surfaced.
Questions were raised about the treatment meted out to her by the police during her 25- day incarceration at the Dum Dum Central Correctional Home. The State’s Human Rights Commission had sought a report from the State police and also recorded her statements after she said she was harassed by the police during her stay there.
