For four months, four weeks and one day, their laser-focus protest had one demand: The ouster of their federation boss on charges of sexual harassment. In April 2023 when a government appointed oversight committee headed by boxer Mary Kom fell short, India’s most decorated wrestlers, including Vinesh Phogat, Bajrang Punia and Sakshi Malik pitched their tents on the street.
Just down the street from the protest site where he lived, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh showed no sign of being disturbed let alone dislodged. The wrestlers then said they would march to the new Parliament building on the day it was being inaugurated. Instead, Delhi police dragged them on the street, pushed them into buses and removed them from public view.
When they threatened to dump their medals into the Ganga, a hasty patch-up was brokered by the powerful farmer’s union.
Under Supreme Court orders, Delhi police had to file criminal charges. But the most egregious of them by a minor that would have been tried under India’s strict Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) was mysteriously withdrawn.
Under pressure from the Indian Olympic Committee, fresh elections to the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) were finally held in December 2023 but Brij Bhushan’s chosen proxy, Sanjay Singh won easily.
They didn’t even bother to pretend—a beaming and garlanded Brij Bhushan with his arm around Sanjay Singh. Singh (Sanjay, not Brij Bhushan) promptly announced that the under-13 and under-20 Nationals would be held in Gonda, which falls under Kaiserganj constituency from where the BJP strongman has won six Lok Sabha elections.
By then the political climate had changed a bit. State elections in Haryana from where many of the wrestlers come from, and have enormous ground support, were around the corner. So were the general elections. Like all parties, the BJP was counting on the woman vote. So, finally, in December 2023, the sports ministry announced it was placing WFI under suspension.
Game on
An indication of how fast things change in India came earlier this week when the same ministry that had earlier suspended WFI announced on Tuesday that it was time after all to revoke that suspension since the “continued governance void… could hurt India’s medal prospects in the 2026 Asian Games and 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.”
The ministry’s decision, reports Hindustan Times, “will not only open up India’s participation at international events, but will also allow WFI to organize national camps after a two-year gap.” Just days later on Saturday, trials of the Asian Championships were held in New Delhi.
“Sanjay Singh who was Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s shadow is back. The remote control is back in his hands,” says senior advocate Rahul Mehra who represented Phogat and Punia in court.
The argument that the suspension is being revoked because wrestlers are suffering is specious, continues Mehra. “There was so much they could have done, including bringing in reforms through an IOA-appointed ad hoc committee. But what did they do over the last one-and-a-half years? Absolutely nothing.”
Kapil Sibal, Rajya Sabha MP and senior advocate who represented the wrestlers in the Supreme Court, called the ministry’s decision to revoke the suspension, “the height of unilateralism. There is no moral issue involved.”
Taking on powerful men
The ministry’s decision to revoke WFI’s suspension comes days after a Mumbai court disposed of two criminal cases made by actress Tanushree Dutta against actor Nana Patekar. The court said Dutta’s complaint of sexual harassment was filed beyond the prescribed period of limitation.
It was Dutta’s revelations in 2018 of being molested on a film set by Patekar some years earlier that lit the spark of the extraordinary MeToo movement in India. But in the six years since many of the accusations have dwindled–some threatened by criminal defamation cases quietly withdrew and many men took the simple route of laying low waiting for the wind to change.
It takes remarkable grit to make charges of sexual harassment against powerful men stick. Then chief minister Ranjan Gogoi, accused by a junior court employee, was swiftly exonerated by his peers and now, post-retirement, sits in the Rajya Sabha as a member of Parliament. And while M.J. Akbar had to resign as junior minister of external affairs, after over 20 women accused him of sexual assault, he retaliated by filing criminal defamation charges against one of them, journalist Priya Ramani. After she won in court, Akbar filed an appeal in the Delhi high court where the matter now lies.
The wrestlers have fought the good fight, says Rudraneil Sengupta, author of Enter the Dangal who has closely tracked the protest. “Now it is up to the system to give them justice.”
And it’s not over yet—not by a long shot. The criminal trial against Brij Bhushan continues as the court records the evidence by six women. Even though the minor has withdrawn her statement and even though there is no sign of the case concluding soon, the women have remained firm. Following the reinstatement of WFI, Vinesh Phogat now a Congress MLA from Haryana, vowed to fight on.
Perhaps the public mood has also changed. Certainly, developments in Kerala following the publication of the Hema Committee report under pressure from the exceptional Women in Cinema Collective group gives cause for hope. The message is clear: Justice for women for sexual harassment complaints remains hard but not impossible.
Back in May 2023, when I met the wrestlers at the protest site, I had asked Sakshi Malik what she would do if they lost. Without a pause, she looked right at me and replied: “But we will not.”
