Police say Pinki Pramanik is male, doctors contest claim


Subhendu Maiti, Hindustan Times
Kolkata, November 13, 2012
Pinki charged with rape after test confirms she is male

Sharp differences emerged between the police and members of the medical board after the former submitted a chargesheet declaring decorated athlete Pinki Pramanik as being a male and proceeding to accuse the person of raping a woman while the doctors told HT Pramanik was not a male but a “male pseudo hermaphrodite”.

On June 14, a 32 year-old woman lodged a complaint with the Baguihati police here against Pramanik, saying ‘he’ had raped her with the promise of marriage.

Pramanik had also grabbed her properties, the woman alleged in the complaint, on the basis of which Pramanik was arrested and produced before a court the same day.

A gender determination test followed.http://www.hindustantimes.com/Images/Popup/2012/11/13-11-mumbai1.jpg

Pramanik told HT, “The chargesheet is incorrect. The medical report is different.”

Defending the police version Shantomay Basu, additional public prosecutor said, “The medical board that examined Pinki Pramanik declared Pramanik as being a male having the ability to rape. The police have filed the chargesheet in this regard.”

Members of the medical board told HT they differed with the police.

“Pinki is neither a male nor a female. Pramanik is a male pseudo hermaphrodite. It is genetic disorder. That’s the medical opinion. It’s now for the court to deliberate,” Dr BN Kahali, board chairman, said.

Charged with rape, Pinki says police want her to commit suicide

KOLKATA Citing a medical report that claimed that gold medallist athlete Pinki Pramanik was a “male”, police Monday filed a chargesheet in a West Bengal court accusing the sportsperson of rape.The police chargesheet was based on the opinion of a sevenmember medical board constituted to confirm the athlete’s gender in June following allegations by her live-in partner that she was “actually a male” who had raped her repeatedly.
The formal set of charges was filed inthecourtofchiefjudicialmagistrate at Barasat town in North 24 Parganas district. Pinki is now out on bail.
Alleging a “huge conspiracy” after police filed a chargesheet Pramanik saidtheinvestigatingauthoritieswere trying to force her to commit suicide.
Pinki said that contrary to the police claim, the medical report had concluded that she was incapable of committing rape. However, she said despite requests, she had not been givenacopyofthemedicalreport.“Police have plotted a huge conspiracy againstme.Theyaretryingtoforceme into committing suicide,” said Pinki. The chargesheet said Pinki was a male and accused the athlete of raping her live-in partner.
PINKI MALE: MEDICAL REPORT
The chargesheet was based on the opinion of the seven-member medical board which had been constituted at the state-run SSK Hospital to confirm the athlete’s gender in June following allegations from her live-in partner that she was “actually a male” who had raped her repeatedly.
“Medical tests have confirmed thatPinkiisnotafemale,”B.N.Kahali, chairman of the board, told AFP. “Pinki is a male pseudo-hermaphrodite. Wehavesubmittedthemedicalreport to the district sessions court.”
Male pseudo-hermaphrodites are genetic males who develop some female physical characteristics and identities. Additional Public Prosecutor Santomoy Bose said after the hearing: “I have seen the report…from the doctors’ opinion it can be concluded that Pinki is a male.” The chargesheet alsoaccusedPinkioftorture,cheating, co-habiting with the promise of marriage and threat to the complainant not to disclose their relationship.
“As per my knowledge, the board had said I had symptoms of excess male hormones as after-effect of some of the drugs I had taken during my sports career,” Pinki said.
The athlete was arrested June 14 and remanded to judicial custody the nextdayaftertheathlete’slive-inpartner,adivorceeandamotherofone,filed the police complaint.
Pinki was later taken to a private nursing home for a medical check-up where the test reports claimed that the athlete was indeed a male. The athlete was taken to the Barasat district hospital and finally to the state-run SSKM Hospital here for the tests.
As SSKM Hospital did not have facilities for chromosome pattern test, the samples were sent to Hyderabad where the examination was done.
Pinki later alleged that she was treated like an animal during gender tests which were done by tying her hands and feet.
The treatment meted out to the athlete had then attracted severe criticism from all quarters, including the sporting fraternity. Pinki, who retired from athletics three years ago, won gold in the 4×400 metres relay at the 2006 Asian Games in Qatar’s capital Doha. Pinki was a silver medallist at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games the same year.

AGENCIES

 

 

 

Chhattisgarh Killings What If They Were/Were Not Maoists?


 EPW-Vol – XLVII No. 33, August 18, 2012

The discourse on deaths in “encounters” with Maoists as in Chhattisgarh in June is usually framed in terms of whether or not the victims were Maoists. This is a wrong way of positing the issue. If the confl ict is dealt with as a law and order concern, then police fi ring is permissible only in self-defence. If it is seen as an armed confl ict, then under international conventions different rules apply, but the Government of India has refused to recognise the actions against the Maoists as part of an (non-international) armed confl ict.

Srinivas Burra (srinivasb@sau.ac.in) teaches at the Faculty of Legal Studies, South Asian University, New Delhi.

Read full article here

About 14,000 families depend on manual scavenging in Kerala #indiashining


, TNN | Aug 9, 2012,

KOCHI: The enumerators for the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 seem to have come up with some curious data.According to them, there are 13,687 families who depend on manual scavenging to eke out a living in Kerala which has won global acclaim for its high levels of social development.Another perplexing finding is that there are 14,947 freed bonded labour families in the state.

Interestingly, even as per the census data of 1982 there were only 51 families who belong to the category of freed bonded labour in the state and all of them are known to have expired, the officials of the Rural Development Department (RDD) told TOI here. The data collection launched in April 11 was over in June. The SECC data also shows that 17,564 families belong to the primitive tribal group in the state and has accorded the status to five tribes, namely Kaadar, Cholanaikkar, Kattunaikkar, Koraka and Kurumba.

According to RDD officials, there could be a maximum of 5,000 families in the state in the group, mainly in Wayanad, Idukki and Kannur.

However, the data collected as part of the SECC indicates that there are about 1,500 families belonging to the group even in Thiruvananthapuram. The RDD officials clarified that some of the enumerators might have committed errors without knowing the criteria to be used for entering into different categories in the census data.

For instance the enumerators may have included the workers engaged in the city cleaning activities in the city areas as manual scavengers, he said.

The entire data collection exercise was paperless, done on hand-held electronic devices. This was expected to reduce data entry errors and enumerator discretion. Also officers at various levels were expected to make sure that there was no misreporting. But RRD officials are surprised that despite all these precautions such errors have crept in.

“We are trying to conduct another round of sample survey to trace how and where the errors have crept in,” the rural development commissioner Nandakumar said.

Tribal language teachers go without salary for 8 months #Indiashining


, TNN | Aug 3, 2012,
KEONJHAR: Tribal language teachers inKeonjhar district have not received their salary for the last eight months. They have brought the matter to the notice of the district collector on a number of occasions, but no action has been taken so far, the teachers said.

Brundaban Juang, a teacher, said, “We got salary from June to October 2011. After that, we have not got any payment for eight months. We belong to poor tribal families. We are living in extreme distress.”

According to sources, the government appointed tribal language teachers in schools run bySC/ST department with a view to developing the languages and bringing down the number of school drop outs among tribals.

According to a state government decision, the district administration had published advertisements for the post of language teachers in different tribal languages like Juang, Oram,Santhal and Munda. On the basis of that, 16 teachers were appointed.

U K Naik of the Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA) of Keonjhar said, “Salaries of the language teachers have not been paid because the government has not sanctioned money.”

“The government is spending huge amount of money for the development of tribals, mostly their education. But it is astonishing that tribal language teachers are not getting salary. The government should take immediate corrective measures,” said Girija Mishra, the secretary of Keonjhar bar association.

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