Constable Lalita Salve. (Express Photo by Prashant Nadkar)
POLICE constable Lalita Salve of Beed district, whose application for a gender reassignment surgery received the nod from Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis earlier this year, will be in Mumbai on Tuesday to admit herself to the state-run JJ Hospital.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Salve (29) said that on Sunday, her SPO communicated to her the government’s decision to grant her leave to undergo the surgery.
“I am on my way to Mumbai and my first stop will be the JJ hospital, where I will get myself admitted for the surgery,” added Salve, who has been fighting since September last year to undergo the surgery. She had said that she would like to be re-inducted into the Maharashtra Police as a male constable.
In March this year, Fadnavis, who also holds the home portfolio, had cleared the file permitting Salve to undergo a gender reassignment surgery.
SPO Rajeev Talekar said his office received a letter from the state home department on Sunday. “In the letter, the government has granted Salve the permission to undergo a surgery. I have informed Salve about the same and her sick leave has been sanctioned.”
Salve said she was grateful to the CM, the DGP, her SP and the staff at the Majalgaon police station, where she is posted. “I just cannot express in words how happy I am today,” Salve said over the telephone. Earlier, Salve had said that the wait for official communication from the home department was causing her anxiety. “Am I Lalita or Lalit? I have no answer when people ask me. Sometimes I feel suicidal,” she had said.
On Sunday, as soon as she heard the news, she called her mother Kesaribi. “My mother is the happiest. She has seen me weep. She knows what I was going through. We both cried on Sunday, but those were happy tears.”
Inducted in Maharashtra Police in 2010 as a woman police constable, Salve has been posted at various police stations in Beed, besides a two-year stint with the Riot Control Police of the district. She is currently attached to Damini Pathak, a specialised unit formed to arrest what the locals call roadside Romeos.
However, Beed SP Sreedhar Govindrajan was noncommittal on Salve’s reinduction to the force as a male constable. “The government has granted Salve the permission to undergo a surgery, following which, she has proceeded on leave from Monday. On the point about Salve being reinducted as a male constable, the DGP office has written to the state home department seeking clarification,” he said.
A senior official from the DGP office said the communique from the home department only states that the constable should be granted permission to undergo the surgery. The DGP office has sent to the home department the medical records from a government hospital, which had earlier opined that Salve that was a “male but reared as a female”.