CHENNAI: Each workday, S Madhupriya borrows Rs 20 or Rs 30 to pay for the bus to reach work and go back home. The 29-year-old transgender woman, who worked as a nursing assistant at Cuddalore Central Prison, alleges that prison officials in 2024 had told her to stay home after learning of her gender-affirming surgery.
Following a Madras High Court order, she returned to service at a hospital in Cuddalore after DGP (Prisons) Sandeep Rai Rathore took up the matter, but her salary arrears remain unpaid for two years now.
Madhupriya joined Cuddalore Central Prison as a nursing assistant in February 2021, the income from which helped support her visually impaired father and her mother, a daily-wage labourer.
She then underwent gender-affirming surgery in March 2024 and continued working, she said, until a security check in August brought her transition to the notice of officials. “You are female now, you cannot perform the duties here. Stay at home. We will call you,” she recalls being told.
No one called her back, she said, and her salary stopped in December 2024. “If I had committed a professional error, I would have accepted the consequences. But what did I do wrong?” she asks. She took up other work and borrowed money to get by.
A representation she submitted at the department headquarters in Chennai in January 2025 also failed to resolve the issue. Madhupriya then approached the HC, which, in an order dated November 11, 2025, directed the authorities to depute her as a female nursing assistant at the Cuddalore GH and release her salary arrears from December 1, 2024.
The posting did not happen immediately. The delay in receiving her arrears continues to affect her. “I borrow Rs 20 or Rs 30 here and there just to pay for the commute,” she says, adding that the money is essential to support her family.
DGP Rathore told TNIE the department was committed to addressing the stigma faced by transgender persons. He said he would follow up with the authorities to resolve the salary issue.
