The process of lalita Kumari Salve turning into lalit Kumar Salve began on Friday, as the 29-year-old constable from Beed district of Marathwada region in Maharashtra underwent the first stage of her much-discussed sex reassignment surgery (SRS) at the state-run St George’s Hospital here.
After lalita Kumari’s two-year-long struggle to get an official nod to undergo a sex change operation, a team of doctors, headed by noted plastic surgeon Dr Rajat Kapoor, carried out SRS on her — a surgery that lasted for more than four hours.
lalita, who had undergone a series of pre-surgery tests and procedures after she was admitted the hospital on Tuesday, was wheeled into the operation theatre around 8.00 am. After the surgery ended at around noon, the constable was shifted to the ICU where the man-in-the-making will remain for the next few days.
Confirming that the surgery went off very well, Dr Kapoor said: “We completed successfully the first stage of the surgery on Salve. We will carry out the second part of the surgery after six months”.
During the first stage of surgery, the doctors carried out some internal corrections that would facilitate lalita to urinate like a man. The second stage of surgery will involve constructing male genitalia. “The second surgery will be conducted once she is found with adequate male hormonal levels,” Dr Kapoor said.
Friday’s was the first such “complex and ultra-sensitive” sex change surgery conducted on an adult person, at the St George’s Hospital.
lalita’s dream of turning into a man four years after she was recruited as a police constable in Beed district of Maharashtra in May 2010.
In a local private laboratory test done on her on August 9, 2014, she was diagnosed with the presence of male genes in the karyotyping G-Banding Peripheral blood. The tests revealed that she genetically mate with XY chromosomes.
On June 23, 2016, lalita once again underwent a test in the medical department of the Sir Grant Medical Hospital in Mumbai which suggested “her” to be a male person. After the test, she was advised to undergo SRS for becoming a male as her hormonal imbalances tends towards male.
Immediately afterwards, she went to Masina Hospital in Mumbai as a follow-up on her plans to undergo SRS and was found physically “fit” to undergo sex change surgery.