It has been a trying day for Nikita Mukhydal, a transgender woman from the western Indian state of Maharashtra who is fighting for the inclusion of transgender people in the state police force.
Dressed in camouflage attire, she led a protest march with several others from the transgender community over the Maharashtra police force’s application policies. It was their second demonstration in two months.
“It has always been a fight for gender identity,” Mukhydal, who was assigned male at birth, told DW.
“When I was around 4 years old, my mannerisms began to look like those of a girl. I liked being a girl. It was what my body was making me do, making me walk like a girl, talk like a girl,” she said. “Society told me that I was different.”
Mukhydal realized she wanted to be a police officer after working as a security guard. She applied for the Maharashtra police force in 2022, but she found there was no third gender category. She was also not allowed to apply under the female category.
Mukhydal and several other transgender individuals then approached an administrative tribunal, which ordered the state to create a provision for transgenders in the recruitment form.
“The department went to court against the order, saying that we were not capable for police recruitment. Our lawyer argued how can we be deemed incapable without being examined and without taking our physical and written exams? The High Court ruled in our favor,” she said.
In December 2022, transgender people were permitted to fill out the recruitment form. However, the process was not easy. Mukhydal said they were given only five days to finish the application.
“Despite that, 73 transgender people filled out the forms. But if this time frame would have been a month long, maybe 1,000 applications would have come in,” she said. They were then given three months to prepare for the physical standards test.
“The attitude of the government was negative toward us. They had already decided that we were not capable,” she said.
Mukhydal passed the physical test. However, she was dismayed to see that her name, along with other transgender applicants, was listed in the female column, despite having spent time and effort to have a third gender included. (DW)