Maharashtra Cop Lalita Salve to Undergo Sex Change Operation Today
The 29-year-old cop Lalita Salve will undergo a gender reassignment surgery today at St. George Hospital.
Twenty-nine-year-old Lalita Salve, a police constable from Rajegaon in Beed district in Maharastra is scheduled to undergo a gender reassignment surgery today and has been admitted to St. George Hospital. The cop was in the news last month when CM Devendra Fadnavis cleared his request for a sex change. According to a report in the Hindustan Times, Lalita was diagnosed with a physical abnormality called ‘undescended testes’ at birth, which caused confusion about his gender at birth. Testicles usually descend by the time the male child is nine months old. But in Lalita’s case, they didn’t descend into scrotal sac, which led the family to believe that he is, in fact, a female.
Lalita, who was raised as a girl, had trouble adjusting to his assigned gender since he was young. He approached the Bombay High Court in 2017, seeking a month’s leave to undergo a gender reassignment surgery. A panel of doctors evaluated his case to see whether he was medically and mentally fit to go in for surgery.
A doctor at St. George’s Hospital who was following Lalita’s case said that the doctors would perform a multi-staged gender reconstructive surgery after an initial round of medical investigations and psychiatric tests.
Dr. Rajat Kapoor who will handle the plastic surgery says that currently, Lalita’s genitals look like that of a woman. He also has to urinate standing. Skin and tissues around his thighs and genitals will be used to craft male genitalia, which will allow him to urinate while standing.
According to the doctors, the surgery might take three to six months, depending how fast the tissues mature and heal. After creating a penis, the doctors will work towards creating a scrotal for him. A hair transplant procedure will also be carried out to give Lalita a beard.
A doctor from JJ Hospital who evaluated Lalita’s case said that a karyotyping test had been performed, which checks the number and structure of a person's chromosomes to detect abnormalities. Ideally, this test should have been performed during Lalita’s birth, when the abnormality was first detected.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 23, 2018 10:22 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).