Santhi Soundarajan Biography 
Santhi Soundarajan is a former Indian athlete from Tamil Nadu whose 2006 silver medal at Asian games was stripped following her failure in a gender verification test. A winner of 11 international medals for India and 50 medals for Tamil Nadu, Santhi was in a midst of controversies for quite a long time. After this her career also ended. Following the torture and gender humiliation she faced after the gender test, she even attempted a suicide. She was forced to work as a labourer in a brick kiln. Now she started a training academy at her home district of Pudukkottai and has become an athlete coach. She also completed her dream to become an educationally qualified athlete and she was awarded the NIS diploma certificate at the Sports Authority of India graduation ceremony in Bangalore. She was also provided with financial assistant by Indian government.
Santhi Soundarajan was born in 1981 in a remote village of Pudukkottai District. She was born into a poor dalit family. She was the eldest of 4 siblings. She took care of her younger siblings when her parents went out to do work. She won her first competition while studying in class 8. Later she won many interschool competitions. After schooling, she joined a college at Pudukkottai with the help of a scholarship. Later she studied at Chennai where she was busy with athletic competitions. She is a national record for the women’s 3000 meters steeplechase.
In 2005 she won a silver medal at Asian Athletics Championships in South Korea and got opportunity to represent India at 2006 Doha Asian Games. In the 800 meters, she finished second winning silver medal for India. But she had to undergo sex test shortly afterwards and failed in the gender verification test. Media reported her condition to be Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome and later it was declared that she is unfit to play under women’s category. The medal was stripped off too. The news initiated a lot of debates and controversies later.
Published: N/A
Updated: September 05, 2014
