Maharashtra cop seeking sex change to undergo surgery

Salve was diagnosed with an anomaly called ‘undescended testes’ resulting in confusion about the sex since birth

A 29-year-old police constable Lalita Salve from Rajegaon in Beed district, who got the government’s nod to get a gender reassignment surgery earlier this year, was admitted to St. George Hospital on Tuesday.

Salve, raised as a female, had approached the Bombay HC in November 2017 seeking a month’s leave to undergo ‘gender reassignment surgery’. (HT PHOTO)

Salve was diagnosed with an anomaly called ‘undescended testes’ resulting in confusion about the sex since birth.

Salve, raised as a female, had approached the Bombay HC in November 2017 seeking a month’s leave to undergo ‘gender reassignment surgery’. A panel of doctors was formed at Sir JJ hospital to evaluate the case.

A doctor at St George hospital, who has followed Salve’s case since a year said that an initial round of medical investigations, including psychiatric tests, will be performed following which, doctors will perform a multi-staged gender reconstructive surgery.

“Presently the genitals look like that of a female. He urinates while sitting. We will perform a surgery using tissues around his genitals and thighs, to create male genitalia, which will allow him to urinate while standing,” said Dr Rajat Kapoor, plastic surgeon, St George Hospital, who will perform the surgery.

The surgeries will take three to six months, depending on how the tissues after surgery mature and heal.

The next step, Dr Kapoor said will be to create a scrotal sac and ensure that he gets a beard.

“We may have to perform a hair transplant procedure to give him a beard. We will ask him what shape he likes, depending on which, we will do the transplant,” Dr Kapoor said.

A doctor from JJ hospital, who was a part of a panel, which had evaluated her case said, “We had done a karyotyping test — to evaluate the type of chromosomes to understand the gender, which ideally should have been done at the time of the birth — after doctors first noticed the anomaly.”

“People born with this condition face psychological issues such as gender identity crisis and depression,” he added.