A female Indian athlete who won a gold medal at the 2006 Asian Games appeared in court on Friday charged with raping her former lover who has alleged that she is actually a man. Pinki Pramanik was remanded in custody for 14 days to await trial on allegations that she repeatedly raped her female live-in partner. “The court magistrate asked the authorities to constitute a medical board for determining the gender of Pinki,” Prabir Roy, who heads the police station on the outskirts of Kolkata where Pramanik was arrested, told AFP. Pramanik, who retired in 2007, declined to take a medical examination at a government-run hospital when she was questioned on Thursday. “She has brought false charges against me as I refused to give her 300,000 rupees ($5,400),” Pramanik told reporters from the back of a police van before the court hearing. “Truth will prevail,” she said. Pramanik on Thursday had said she had undergone numerous medical check-ups during her running career and added, “Why should I agree to more ridiculous tests?”
“Pinki poses as a woman but is actually a man,” the victim was quoted as saying in Friday’s Calcutta Telegraph. “She would assault me regularly and raped me several times.” She also claimed that Pramanik had promised to marry her. Pramanik, 26, won gold in the 4x400m relay at the Asian Games and a silver for the same event in the 2006 Commonwealth Games before she stopped competing the following year. She grew up as the daughter of a poor farmer in rural West Bengal state, about 140 miles (220 kilometres) from Kolkata and has worked as a ticket inspector on the Indian railways. “My daughter is innocent,” Pramanik’s mother, Puspa Pramanik, told a Bengali TV channel. “I don’t believe that she can do such a crime. I hope she will get the right judgement.” Police said Pramanik, who had lived with her partner in Kolkata for several months, will stand trial for rape, criminal assault, cheating and criminal intimidation.
