The Gender Warrior

Happiness delivery: A third-gender rights crusader in Chhattisgarh strives to ensure that the members of her community live with dignity

- RAHUL NORONHA

Born Vinay Singh Rajput in 1977 in the Kondagaon district of Chhattisgarh, the third-gender crusader endured decades of abuse as a child and student in her small hamlet of Pharasgaon. "I was not sure of my own identity. I was unable to think like a boy. I felt I was a woman trapped in a man's body," she says. Her effeminate behaviour as a boy made her the target of ridicule.

She was often locked up in bathrooms by the boys in her school, was urinated upon and sexually assaulted. Even her own family was bereft of the sensitivity to understand her.