Akkai Padmashali

Padmashali started her career of activism at Sangama, an LGBT rights group based out of Bangalore where she was motivated to inspire many more minds. Since then she has been fighting a battle for ensuring the dignity and rights of transgender persons as a well sexual minority.[5][8] She felt that the draconian law of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code should be abolished because she had been abused and violated by police on multiple occasions under this law.[9] Police, in multiple instances, would force sex from transgender persons or threaten, malign, or abuse them. She founded the organization named ‘Ondede’,^[6] a human rights organization to advocate the rights of children, women, and sexual minorities. Padmashali has filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India against Section 377 stating that the colonial law is violative of the constitutional rights as well as the 2014 NALSA judgment.^[10][11] She was against the Centre’s proposed Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill 2017. In an interview, Padmashali said that she would prefer being called a woman, not a trans woman.^{[citation needed]}