Poor girl moves PHC for sex reassignment surgery to become male

PESHAWAR: For the first time in Pakistan, the only daughter of her parents on Friday moved the Peshawar High Court to seek an order to declare her entitlement to undergo sex reassignment surgery to change her gender from female to male.

Kainat Murad, 22, a resident of Peshawar, filed the writ petition through her lawyer Saifullah Mohib Kakakhel in the high court.

The petitioner also requested the high court to direct the hospital directors, including Lady Reading Hospital, Khyber Teaching Hospital or Hayatabad Medical Complex to provide free treatment through expert doctors to the petitioner for her gender reassignment surgery.

The petitioner also sought the court’s direction to the Nadra to change the name of the petitioner in official record from Kainat Murad to Muhammad Kaif, son of Waheed Murad.

It was submitted in the petition that she is the lone female child of her parents.

“My father is suffering from paralysis and has been jobless for more than a decade. We have no source of livelihood,” Kainat Murad claimed in the petition.

She revealed that since her birth in 1996, she was living a life of male child only wearing a veil of female body.

“I love to play sports, wear dresses of gents and all my friends are males with whom I play cricket. I ride motorbike and all my hobbies are gents related,” she stated in the petition.

It said that the petitioner is almost a male. It said the doctors advised her that she would undergo a sex reassignment surgery, which is very common in developed countries. However, few cases of the surgery have come to doctors in Pakistan.

Kainat Murad said the doctors advised her to approach the court and get permission for the surgery.

“Women’s rights violations are very common in developing and underdeveloped countries. Women cannot move freely from their house to their workplace. Moreover, they are not even safe at their workplace and are sexually harassed, humiliated and exploited on the ground of their sex,” the petitioner said.

The petition noted that there are numerous examples in which the gender was changed from female to male as some of them had genetic issues, while some underwent surgeries. “It is the legal and constitutional right of the petitioner to live of her own choice and change her gender from female to male by undergoing surgery,” the petitioner argued.

The public at large, federal government through federal secretary, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government through chief secretary, chairman Nadra, and hospital directors of LRH, KTH and HMC were made parties in the petition.