Facing allegations of sexual harassment by the nation’s most outstanding wrestlers, Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh has been requested to step down. After a late-night assembly with the protesting wrestlers, Sports Minister Anurag Thakur introduced that an inquiry panel has been arrange with a deadline of 4 weeks to probe the allegations of sexual harassment and monetary irregularities towards Singh.
This ended a three-day protest during which world championship medalists Vinesh Phogat, Deepak Punia and Olympic podium finishers Ravi Dahiya, Bajrang Punia and Sakshi Malik had staged a sit-in at Jantar Mantar.
Speaking to reporters after the assembly, Thakur mentioned, “We are setting up an independent committee to look into all the allegations leveled by the wrestlers against the WFI.” The committee will submit its report in 4 weeks and by then Brij Bhushan will step down. He added that in this era, the committee would run the “day-to-day affairs of the WFI”.
Bajrang Punia, sitting subsequent to him, mentioned, “We are withdrawing the protest because the government and the sports minister have promised us justice.”
The Sports Ministry’s probe panel – the names of its members can be introduced on Saturday – can be arrange once more to probe the WFI and Singh. Earlier within the day, the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) constituted a seven-member committee to probe the allegations.
The IOA mentioned in an announcement that after its govt committee assembly, it was determined to type a committee “as per the Prevention of Sexual Harassment of Women Act of 2013”, which might hear each the events and submit its report on the earliest. IOA members together with Olympian boxer Mary Kom, archer Dola Banerjee and wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt have been named within the inquiry panel.
IOA’s announcement assumes significance as it’s the umbrella group of all of the nationwide federations of Olympic sports activities. The Sports Ministry funds the actions of the federations and grants recognition to them. The IOA and the Sports Ministry, subsequently, work intently to facilitate the participation of Indian athletes in multi-disciplinary sporting occasions.
On that day, the protesting wrestlers additionally intensified their techniques. Two distinguished faces of the protest, wrestlers Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik, had threatened to observe on mats at their protest website at Jantar Mantar from Saturday if their calls for weren’t accepted by the Sports Minister.
The world physique, United World Wrestling, has additionally reacted to the protest. In an electronic mail to The Indian Express, UWW Director of Communications Gordon Templeman mentioned: “The UWW has discovered with nice concern by means of the media about these critical allegations. We will observe the instances intently and take any needed measures commensurate with the result of the investigation. We have reached out to the federation, in addition to attempting to succeed in out to the athletes straight to raised perceive the state of affairs.”
The wrestlers’ letter to the IOA mentions that Vinesh was “mentally abused” and “tortured” by the WFI president after coming back from the Tokyo Olympics with no medal, because of which she “thought of suicide”.
Along with the sexual harassment grievance, the wrestlers accused the WFI of monetary misappropriation of funds and claimed that the coaches and sports activities science employees on the nationwide camp have been “absolutely incompetent”.
The athletes wrote of their letter, “It takes a lot of courage for us wrestlers to come together and protest against the WFI president. We fear for our lives. If he is not sacked, all the youth involved in the dharna will be punished.” His profession could be over. He ended the letter by saying: “We will not budge till the WFI president is sacked”.
With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
