Payal puts jail bosses in a spot

HOW DO you determine a eunuch?s sex? The authorities of the Lucknow district jail were caught in a novel ?He or she? dilemma on Wednesday after Payal, a eunuch wanted in a murder case, surrendered before the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM), Lucknow.

HOW DO you determine a eunuch’s sex?
The authorities of the Lucknow district jail were caught in a novel ‘He or she’ dilemma on Wednesday after Payal, a eunuch wanted in a murder case, surrendered before the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM), Lucknow.

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The CJM sent Payal to jail with a rider for the jail authorities. “Keep the eunuch’s sexual preference in mind while allotting a cell,” the CJM wrote in the remand order.

The order put the jail authorities in a fix. For Payal, after being taken to the district jail, refused to be kept with neither of the sexes. “I am neither here nor there,” Payal told jailor Ramji Singh. Singh was stumped.

The jail authorities tried their best to persuade Payal to choose either the men’s cell or the one exclusively meant for women convicts. “I would hear nothing.

Aren’t you aware about my actual sex?” she asked the jailor instead. Finally, a solution was found. The jail authorities decided to create a separate cell for Payal. The eunuch would be alone in the cell. “It was a tough one for us. We still do not know what Payal might ask for next!” the jailor told HT. The jailor’s fears are justified. For before she was embroiled in the criminal case, Payal used to play the boss to other eunuchs, move around in a motorcycle, contested the Assembly seat against a state BJP heavyweight.

But, for the time being Payal is quiet.