Teacher accuses doctor of botched sex-change operation

KOLKATA: The West Bengal’s

Transgender Development Board

has received a complaint from a schoolteacher who claims his gender identity is hanging on the balance due to a botched-up sex reassignment surgery (

SRS

).

On the other hand, a Jhansi-based educationist is claiming she is dragged into a mess for helping this teacher get in touch in with a doctor who would help in the procedure. Also involved is Manabi Bandyopadhyay, the country’s first transgender principal, who is miffed at the society’s indifference to the concerns of the transgender community.

Hiranmoy Dey, who has a double MA in geography and English and is a city school teacher, got in touch with this educationist after seeing an advertisement. “I had wanted to apply to be a teacher in her school. While talking to her, I told her about feeling like a woman who is trapped in a man’s body. I told her I was tired of being called effeminate and ridiculed. She empathised with me. She booked my train ticket and helped me get in touch with this doctor,” Dey said.

Dey was told that the SRS package would cost Rs 80,000. “I paid Rs 50,000 in cash and also gave a cheque for the remaining amount,” Dey added. The surgery took place on May 21 in Moradabad and Dey was back in Kolkata on May 31. “I also got a certificate from the doctor saying I have become a woman physically and it has been approved on medical grounds,” Dey added.

However, trouble began last Saturday when Dey started bleeding profusely. “Since I am a woman now, I thought I had started menstruating. But that was not so. Had Manabi’di not reached out to me on time, I would perhaps have died by now,” Dey said. “The area around my genitals is bandaged,” the teacher added.

Plastic surgeon Dr Manoj Khanna, whom Manabi had first reached out to help Dey, told TOI: “Dey had come with some problems of bleeding. It is too early to call it a botched-up case. I can’t certify that Dey has indeed become a woman now.”

The Jhansi-based educationist is extremely upset with the turn of events. She said she had reached out to Hiranmoy on humanitarian grounds.The Moradabad doctor was unavailable for any comments.

However, Manabi doesn’t want to hear any of that. “Unless the bandage is removed, no one can say what exactly happened during the surgery.”


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