Mumbai: For 4 years, parents are trying to prove she is a girl

You can download the MCGM mobile application and pay your water bills on the go in a few seconds but try getting the civic body to rectify an error as humungous as getting your childrsquos sex wrong and yoursquoll find yourself waiting for years According to the birth certificate issued to her by the BMC Misba Sayyed a giggling happy fiveyearold girl is Misbha Sayyed a boyMisbarsquos parents have been trying since 2010 to get the BMC to issue a fresh certificate correcting both the spelling error and her gender but their fouryear struggle which involved a lot of running from pillar to post has been in vain Misbarsquos father a tailor told midday that they need the correct birth certificate by next month or her education may be in perilMilliondollar smile Akbar Sayyed with little Misba PicKhushnum BhandariStruggle beginsMisba was born in July 2009 at the BMCrun Sion Hospital to Akbar and Rizwana Sayyed a tailor and housewife respectively The Sayyeds applied for her birth certificate in early 2010 and despite Rizwanarsquos discharge card from Sion Hospital clearly stating that she had given birth to a girl the birth certificate issued to them by the BMC ward office certified that she was a boy and also got her name wrongAkbar who lived in a joint family in Khar East then went to their local ward office HEast Santacruz and informed them about the errors He was told by BMC officials that rectifying such errors usually takes a maximum of 10 days and was asked to get a particular document from Sion Hospital which is part of the record of births that each civicrun hospital sends to the BMC every dayLittle did Akbar know that he was entering a living nightmare that is continuing even four years hence Akbar involved his brother and mother in the process and after making a few rounds of Sion Hospital they managed to get the required document by mid2010 Akbar went to the HEast ward office with the document and was told by officials that they would have to look up the records and he should check back in some timeVarious members of the Sayyed family then began making rounds of the HEast ward office every couple of weeks but were told each time that the hunt for Misbarsquos birth record was still on Months rolled by and Akbar claims that while the ward officials got ruder each time the answer was essentially the sameTowards the end of 2010 the answer finally changed but for the worse Akbar was told by the HEast ward office that they had no record of Misbarsquos birth certificate being issued by them and that he should check with the FNorth Matunga ward office which has jurisdiction over Sion Hospital where Misba was bornTragedy strikesIn early 2011 Akbarrsquos mother passed away and the family spent nearly a year in mourning during which they could not follow up on the birth certificate In early 2012 however when Misba was about to turn three they took up the issue again as they realised that the birth certificate would be crucial to get her admitted in a schoolRewind repeatActing on the HEast ward officersquos directions Akbar who had to do the running around alone now since his brother also had some problems approached the FNorth office in Matunga in 2012 After allegedly making him wait for hours during each visit officials told him to go to the HEast ward office claiming that the birth certificate was issued from thereAn exasperated Akbar told the officials that the HEast office had sent him to the FNorth office and he was then told to get the document from Sion Hospital He gave them the document he had received from the hospital two years back and they asked him to check back laterldquoI made a fresh application in the FNorth ward office in 2012 but every time I went there I was made to wait for hours and then rudely told that the officerincharge was unavailable and I should come back later and try my luck I even approached BMC corporators who put me in touch with officials at the ward level but to no availrdquo Akbar told middayldquoI have now been visiting ward offices for four years They made me run around before accepting the correction application claiming that the hospital records were wrong Only when I got the documents from the hospital did the officials at the ward office accept their mistakeIn 2012 someone at the FNorth office finally said they had found Misbarsquos register number FN23189MOH021112 and asked me to come to collect the changed certificate but when I went again no one helped me to get the problem fixed It has been two years since then but there is no solution in sightrdquo he addedEducation at stakeAkbar said Misba was lucky to have been admitted to the Englishmedium school that she is studying in on the basis of her birth documents from Sion Hospital but the school has made it clear that she may not get admitted to Std II next year if they donrsquot submit the birth certificateldquoThe school has told us that they need the birth certificate by next month or they may not be able to let her study there My daughter goes to Std II next year and no school will admit her without a birth certificate I canrsquot believe that the BMC has put her education in peril by refusing to rectify a simple mistake for four yearsrdquo said Akbar