K Prithika Yashini is India's first transgender police officer

Growing up as a boy in Salem in Tamil Nadu, K Prithika Yashini, who was then Pradeep Kumar, recalls her teenage days with horror. "I was confused and could not focus on my studies. I was even scared of telling my parents about what I was going through and it didn't help that everyone in school started teasing me." This was precipitated by the clear demarcation of gender in school toilets, particularly for a boy who was beginning to identify himself as a woman. Today, the 25-year-old beams with confidence and is all set to be Tamil Nadu and India's first transgender sub-inspector of the police.

A landmark Madras High Court judgment last week has directed the Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board to include members from the transgender community under a "third category" by the time the next recruitment process begins. For Yashini, this comes as a joyful relief from her long-drawn personal and legal battle, besides, of course, giving a new sense of identity and confidence to the transgender community in the state.

It is also a personal victory for Yashini whose humble family origins did not make her transition easy. Her father, who was once a farmer in Salem, now works as a cab driver and her mother is a tailor. She feared that her conservative parents would not accept her desire to change her gender easily. Though she says her style and speech were more "feminine" since she was a child, her desire to undergo sexual reassignment surgery came as a shock to them. "They tried everything from 'medicines' to taking me to temples and astrologers, but I was determined." The reassignment process that began in 2011 is now complete and she formally holds a card that identifies her as a transgender woman.

She decided to move out of her parents' home during her third semester during her graduation and go 300 kilometres away to Chennai. Here, she faced harsh discrimination, especially from landlords who refused to give her a place to rent. "I still remember the first night I came to Chennai and had to spend the entire night at the Koyambedu Bus Stand," recalls Yashini, with tears in her eyes.

Her will was beginning to break, but a part of her strongly believed that she could survive this and remain true to her identity. "Wherever I went for an interview, I was literally thrown out. I had almost stopped dreaming about leading my life on my terms," she says. It took her close to six years to revive her childhood dream of becoming a police officer, during which time she worked as a women's hostel warden, in a counselling company and at a private hospital. In February this year, she applied for the post of a sub-inspector, but was rejected on the grounds that Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board doesn't have a third-gender category.

Not willing to let up, she moved the petition in the Madras High Court, which has led to her recruitment as a police officer through an interim order. But even a Court order was not enough to convince the recruitment board, which kept rejecting her application citing various "flimsy" reasons, including one where it said that her name did not tally with original certificates. It took another round of litigation before she was allowed to participate in field trials in August. Here, too, she was disqualified by 1.1 seconds in a 100-metre race. She and her lawyer, Bhavani Subbarayan, who is believed to have taken her case pro bono, persisted till Yashini was recruited.

Yashini, who is now anxiously waiting to begin her career as a police officer, says that she will continue to work for the cause of the transgender community and help them gain the respect that is so often denied to them. Though she has reconciled with her family, Yashini believes that there are several young children whose parents abandon them once they begin to realise that they are "different". To this end, she counsels children and their parents so that transgender men and women are not ostracised from their communities.