The Government of India has approved a transgender civil service officer’s request to remove his deadname from the official record and replace it with his chosen name. The Ministry of Finance issued an order to this effect on Tuesday, July 9, approving the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer’s name change to M Anukathir Surya. A deadname is the name a person used before their transition.

An officer of the Customs and Indirect Taxes (C&IT) department of the 2013 batch, Anukathir currently serves as the Joint Commissioner in the office of the Chief Commissioner (AR) of the Customs Excise & Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT) in Hyderabad. 

He began his career as an Assistant Commissioner in the Central Board of C&IT in Chennai, and was later promoted as Deputy Commissioner in 2018. It was in 2023 that he joined CESTAT in Hyderabad. 

Anukathir hails from Tamil Nadu and holds a Bachelors’ degree in Electronics and Communication from Madras Institute of Technology. He also completed a PG Diploma in Cyber Law and Cyber Forensics from the National Law Institute University in Bhopal in 2023.