 |
| Pinki Pramanik |
The high court on Friday quashed the proceedings against Asian Games gold medal-winning athlete Pinki Pramanik at a lower court where she was being tried on the charge of raping a woman.
The reason for quashing the proceedings was not clear on Friday as the order was not available, but high court sources said Justice Subrata Talukdar observed while delivering the ruling that a medical test had revealed that Pinki was a woman and it was impossible for her to rape another woman.
The woman with whom Pinki had been living for three years lodged a complaint on June 13, 2012, alleging that the athlete had raped her repeatedly. Pinki was arrested the next day, kept in jail custody for 26 days and made to undergo several rounds of gender tests. Her blood samples were sent for chromosome tests.
“The judge has quashed all proceedings drawn against my client. During hearing, I submitted that a medical test had proved that my client was female. Hence, it was impossible for her to rape another female,” Kaushik Gupta, who represented Pinki in the high court, said after the verdict.
On June 25, 2012, an 11-member medical board comprising doctors from SSKM Hospital had conducted tests to determine Pinki’s gender. The team failed to come to a conclusion in the absence of infrastructure at SSKM to conduct an advanced test.
Pinki’s blood samples were sent to Mumbai, where a chromosome test was done to determine the athlete’s gender.
“We have not received the report,” a member of the medical board said on Friday.
But counsel for Pinki claimed that the chromosome test revealed that the athlete was female.
“I was quite sure that the high court would quash the charges against me. I am happy,” Pinki said after Justice Talukdar issued the ruling.
Friday’s order was on a petition filed by Pinki in 2013, seeking an order to drop the charges against her.
Earlier, a public interest litigation had been filed in the high court challenging the legality of Pinki’s arrest. The petition claimed that female cops were not sent to Pinki’s house to arrest her, a violation of norm.
