AFP/Kolkata
A female athlete who won a gold medal at the 2006 Asian Games appeared in court yesterday charged with raping her former lover who has alleged that she is actually a man.
Police escort Pinki Pramanik to the Barasat district court, around 35km north of Kolkata, yesterday
Pinki Pramanik was remanded in custody for 14 days to await trial on allegations that she repeatedly raped her female live-in partner.
“The court asked the authorities to constitute a medical board for determining the gender of Pinki,” Prabir Roy, who heads the police station on the outskirts of Kolkata where Pramanik was arrested, said.
Pramanik, who retired in 2007, declined to take a medical examination at a government-run hospital when she was questioned on Thursday. “She has brought false charges against me as I refused to give her Rs300,000,” Pramanik told reporters from the back of a police van before the court hearing.
“Truth will prevail,” she said. Pramanik on Thursday had said she had undergone numerous medical check-ups during her running career and added, “Why should I agree to more ridiculous tests?”
“Pinki poses as a woman but is actually a man,” the victim was quoted as saying in the Telegraph newspaper. “She would assault me regularly and raped me several times.”
She also claimed that Pramanik had promised to marry her.
Pramanik, 26, won gold in the 4x400m relay at the Asian Games and a silver for the same event in the 2006 Commonwealth Games before she stopped competing the following year.
She grew up as the daughter of a poor farmer in Bengal and has worked as a railways ticket inspector.
“My daughter is innocent,” Pramanik’s mother, Puspa Pramanik, told a Bengali TV channel. “I don’t believe that she can do such a crime. I hope she will get the right judgement.”
Police said Pramanik, who had lived with her partner in Kolkata for several months, will stand trial for rape, criminal assault, cheating and criminal intimidation. “We don’t know whether it was a case of being male physically or hormonal change over a period of time which can happen,” Athletics Federation of India secretary C K Valson told the Press Trust of India news agency. “We have to wait for the medical report and conclusion of the case.”
In 2006, Indian athlete Santhi Soundarajan failed a gender test and was stripped of the silver medal she won in the women’s 800m at the Asian Games in Doha. Santhi insisted along with her parents and coaches that she had done nothing wrong.
