India’s top wrestlers took to the streets of New Delhi, the nation’s capital, to seek the resignation of the powerful wrestling federation leader over sexual harassment claims.
As a result of their continued protests, on Friday (January 20), Brij Bhushan Singh, another Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Uttar Pradesh, was forced to resign and the government formed a committee to investigate the allegations against him.
Olympic medalists Ravi Dahiya, Bajrang Punia, and Sakshi Malik and world champions Vinesh Phogat and Deepak Punia spearheaded the three-day sit-in protest.
Wrestlers showed incredible bravery in coming out to discuss sexual assault, which they claim to have suffered for years at the hands of Singh and his supporters.
In a heartbreaking confession, Phogat said that she had considered suicide.
Singh has refuted the charges and has remained defiant for days, saying that there is a wider effort to discredit him. However, the grapplers stood their ground.
Phogat has claimed in the media that she has a voice tape of a female wrestler who describes the emotional and physical trauma she endured. Phogat said that she was aware of “10-20 girls” who had been “exploited in the national camp over the past ten years.”
She also said that seven young men had confided in her that they were depressed after being tortured by the federation’s vice president.
Phogat claims that the federation ignored written complaints received by the claimed victims. There are seven vice presidents in the federation, and it is unclear which one the wrestlers are accusing. Athletes in India are locked in a system dominated by politicians and males, making it impossible for women to speak up, as this scandal has revealed.
These athletes have braved the odds to work hard, with little financial or institutional backing, and won Olympic medals. In the beginning, when the wrestlers initially went public with their charges, the common cry on social media was “why did they take so long to speak?”
Most victims of sexual assault, especially if their abuser has a position of authority, are too afraid to come out. Although it may take victims of sexual assault months or even years to get up the nerve to come forward, this in no way lessens the gravity of the offence.
Allegations of sexual assault are nothing new in Indian athletics. The tennis player Ruchika Girhotra, who was just 14 at the time, accused SPS Rathore, the head of the tennis federation at the time and a senior official in the Haryana police force, of sexually assaulting her in 1990.
The tennis player Ruchika Girhotra, who was just 14 at the time, accused SPS Rathore, the head of the tennis federation at the time and a senior official in the Haryana police force, of sexually assaulting her in 1990. However, the state supported him, and he was even elevated to the position of Director General of Police. When the police continued to harass Ruchika, she took her own life, and years later, when Rathore was convicted, he received only six months in jail.
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