THEY celebrate Kumar Purnima in Odisha on the Bay of Bengal next week.

It's the full moon before Diwali, the Festival of Lights. Young women dress in their finest and gather on the banks of the Brahmani river to pray for a handsome life partner.

Dutee Chand, a weavers' daughter from the village of Chaka Gopalpur in Jajpur, has followed this ritual for several years, jostling with her five sisters for time in front of the mirror in her parents' two room house.

But this year may be different.

The 18-year-old Indian is embroiled in a gender controversy which kept her out of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and evokes memories of the nightmare which engulfed the 2009 world 800 metres champion, South African Caster Semenya. Already Chand's case has provoked allegations that the authorities are "encouraging institutionalised genital mutilation".

India's 100 and 200m champion last year, and Asian 200 metres bronze medallist, Chand won the 200m and anchored her country to a second gold in the 4 x 100m relay at the Asian Junior Games in Taipei in June this year. India touted the World Youth 100m finallist as a future Olympic medallist, but less than two weeks before Glasgow 2014 she was told she could not run.

A Sports Authority of India (SAI) doctor informed her she had excess testosterone, and the media camped on her doorstep as she considered her options: hormone therapy or gender realignment surgery.

She has chosen neither. Last week, backed by a battery of experts and bankrolled by the SAI and her state government, she lodged a challenge with the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

In a moving interview with The Indian Express, she said she is impressed by how Semenya has made a comeback: "But I want to remain who I am and compete again. I have lived my life as a girl," she says.

She had failed to tick a box on her test form requesting anonymity, but this may have rebounded to her advantage. Her case gained widespread currency. Dr Payoshni Mitra, a consultant on gender and sports issues who is helping the case presented to CAS, advised against surgery. "The current policy that requires women athletes with hyperandrogenism to undergo therapy or surgery if they want to compete again is encouraging genital mutilation in an institutionalised way," says Mitra.

The Olympic movement and several international sports bodies suggest surgery as an option.

To have Chand exposed under the microscope of pubic prurience is appalling. It shows nothing has been learned from the Semenya affair. Her case was exposed by the media and the International Association of Athletics Federations had to act.

It goes without saying that investigation must be done, but it must be sensitively and confidentially conducted. It is essential that sport is a level playing field, where athletes are not disadvantaged by drugs, but equally where those with excessive levels of male hormone do not compromise others. This remains a blurred area.

The Oympic movement and IAAF determined the minimum male range for testosterone at 10 nanomoles per litre of blood (10nml/L) and since April 2011 confidential investigations can be made on "reasonable grounds". This could even be a complaint from a jealous rival, and may be what happened to Chand.

Yet cases of excessive testosterone in women has been shown to be of no benefit. And the agreed 10nml/L threshold may even be unreliabe. Professor Peter Sonksen, whose research helped develop a test for human growth hormone, found 16 per cent of male athletes he tested had lower than expected testosterone, whereas 13 per cent of female athletes had higher levels - a huge overlap. It confirms that levels among the general population are not mirrored in elite athletes.

Chand's parents, she says, earn around 500 rupees (£5.07) a week for weaving a shawl or sari. She is from a similar simple and disadvantaged background to Semenya. It is hard to imagine how anyone, however sophisticated, could cope with what Chand is facing, far less process and evaluate data like the above.

It is a feature of athletics - a commendably globally unifying one - that the sport is open to all creeds, colours, and sexual orientation, all social backgrounds. But those who proclaim this, adopting the moral high ground, must acknowledge the concomitant duty of care. And that means absolute confidentiality for the likes of Chand.

This may destroy her life. We pray one day she can revisit moonlit idylls.