Akkai Padmashali has just won the right to get a passport issued for her five-year-old son that didn’t include a father’s name and listed her as the mother, a victory for both trans women and single mothers in the country.

In 2018, Padmashali became the first trans woman in the state of Karnataka to register a marriage, and a year later she adopted her son, Avin. She later divorced her husband.

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She said that getting a passport for her son without her ex-husband’s name on it was difficult.

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“Getting his passport was a huge struggle,” she told the Time of India. “For Avin’s passport, I had to visit the Regional Passport Office in Koramangala. There, a transphobic woman kept asking for details of Avin’s father, despite me showing her the divorce papers and the deed of adoption. She even said, ‘I am going to put your child’s adopted father’s name. Otherwise, I’ll not issue the passport’. But I questioned her logic and got the higher-ups involved. Finally, he got his passport, with just my name on it.”

“Transphobia is a huge issue,” she continued. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been in such a situation. I may not look like a cis-het woman but I identify as a woman and that’s that. That should be enough.”

The Washington Blade points out that 2016 reforms to the nation’s passport laws allowed single parents to get a passport for their child without listing the other parent’s name on it.

Padmashali said that the national passport authority in India is “very sensitive” to the needs of transgender people.

“I got my passport as a female, and Avin’s also getting the passport without naming the father, I think it’s a national issue,” she said. “From the transgender person’s point of view, I am happy that my Supreme Court has recognized the community and the parliament has recognized the Transgender Protection Act. India is in process of progressing, I would say.”

Padmashali made headlines in 2019 when she adopted her child.

“It has been my dream and desire,” she said at the time. “Our families have accepted the baby. It’s heart-warming to see the little one playing on my mother’s lap. I just hope that he does not face any kind of discrimination and social stigma when he grows up.”

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