Her handshake is firm. The body is strong, and the muscles look like they are ready for a sprint. But look into Pinki Pramanik’s eyes, and you see deep sorrow. The 27-year-old medal-winning athlete has been placed under harsh arc lights for several days now. And all that she wants is to be left alone.

There’s a crowd of reporters waiting outside her house. As I trudge my way through the narrow bylane of Nishi Kanan to Bidisha Pally — a middle-class locality on the northern fringes of Calcutta — I find that Pinki’s two-storey pink house has barred its doors to the media. She’s had enough of probing questions.

I am refused entry too — but managed to wriggle my way in when the door is opened to a local councillor and Pinki’s advocate. I have to wait for a couple of hours before I finally get to meet her. She is wearing a black and purple T-shirt with dark blue jeans, a black cap and sneakers. She is trying to look calm — but the signs of distress are all there.

She sits on the edge of a sofa, with her head bowed and her hands folded.

Twenty-six days in jail seem to have broken her spirit. Late last month, Pinki Pramanik was accused by a woman of being a male and of raping her after promising marriage. She was rounded up by policemen who forced her to undergo tests in a nursing home. An MMS clip of parts of Pinki’s naked body went viral. Pinki finally walked out of the jail on July 11 and alleged she was the victim of a conspiracy involving blackmail.

“I have been framed,” she says.

I ask her how she spent her days in jail. Her only solace, she says, was an elderly man she called Kaka. “I used to pour my heart out to him. He gave me the strength to carry on.”

Most days she would squat on the floor, resting her chin on her knees and stare blankly at the grey floor. “The humiliation ran so deep that I could eat very little. I was told there were hardened criminals all over the place, and I kept thinking what I’d done to earn their company.” There were times when she felt it was better to die than to carry on.

Pinki holds that the woman who levelled the charges at her did so because the athlete had refused to give her money. “She used to do my chores. She had been demanding money from me, but when I refused, she took this path. I also paid for her child’s education. Now this is the price that I have to pay.”

Pinki has seen deprivation — and thought she was helping a woman in need. Growing up in Tilkadih village in Purulia, she knew how tough life could be.

Her father, a driver, earned barely Rs 50 a day. One of five siblings, she and her three sisters found peace in running. They took part in district level competitions. But Pinki always wanted to run further — and faster — than anybody else.

It was like dreaming the impossible dream in a household always short of food. An athlete needed a proper diet, and the family lived on rice, dal and vegetables. “We didn’t have enough money to buy meat on a regular basis. It was my passion for the game that sustained me,” Pinki stresses.

Father Durga Charan did what he could to keep her going. Once, she recalls, they sold a gold chain that belonged to her sister-in-law to enable her to take part in a competition in Bangkok.

Today her father looks like a broken man. His phone doesn’t stop ringing, but he seems to find it difficult to answer the endless questions that are being fired at him. He forgets his words — and keeps pacing from one end of the room to another, stopping every now and then for a gulp of water.

The drawing room is cluttered and shabby. The small space near the entrance is occupied by two refrigerators and a washing machine. A huge sofa takes up most of the space, along with a big television set with a rack above it where Pinki’s many trophies are displayed. A stack of jeans — all Pinki’s — are piled in one corner of the room. Her washed T-shirts — the ones she wore in jail — hang on the rusted handrails of a narrow stairway.

What was Pinki’s life like as she grew up? Did she — like hundreds of thousands of other young women — wear a sari and go pandal hopping during the Pujas? “I never had the time for all this. I only concentrated on my game. Ten or 15 years ago I used to wear skirts and dresses. But once I was seriously into sports I stopped wearing all that,” she says.

Pinki was first noticed as a member of the national 4x400m relay team which won a silver medal at the 2006 Commonwealth Games and the gold at the 2006 Asian Games. She won three gold medals in the 2006 South Asian Games — including the 400m and 800m events.

Now the past seems like another age. The future is bleak, too, as Pinki has to fight her case in court.

“I am not thinking about anything right now. I really don’t know what I want to do. But I do want to rejoin work,” says Pinki, a ticket checker with the Eastern Railways. She also hopes to meet chief minister Mamata Banerjee. “Yes, I will definitely meet Didi and ask her for help.”

My final question — on how her detractors have been saying that she is a man — disturbs her.

“I really don’t want to talk about this. It is sub judice and everything will be settled in court,” Pinki says. “I am a woman,” she adds.