India's women wrestlers fight to take down alleged abuser over sexual harassment

With sit-ins and threats to cast their medals into the Ganges, two top women wrestlers have caught the hearts of India's public as they seek justice for what they allege was sexual harassment by the head of their sport, who is also a senior member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Sakshi Malik, 30, and Vinesh Phogat, 28, made the allegations in January and demanded that police arrest and investigate Brij Bhushan Singh, 66, head of the Wrestling Federation of India, whom they accuse of sexual harassment.

But their cause, which has drawn support from student groups, farmers, Indian athletes and the International Olympic Committee, has riled authorities, leading to their brief detention and then an attempt to use deepfake photography to discredit their cause.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

In at least 10 police complaints, the women allege that Singh, over many years, inappropriately touched and sexually harassed six Olympians. Allegations have also been levelled against the politician by the father of a minor.

Some women feared him so much that they said they used to hide during his visits to their training facilities, to avoid being molested by him on the pretext of checking their heart rate.

Singh, a six-time MP of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, is a powerful politician in the state of Uttar Pradesh and has presided over India's wrestling world for almost 15 years. He has denied the allegations.

But six years since the #MeToo movement swept parts of the world, with its aim of ensuring that women who say they have been sexually harassed are heard, the wrestlers are still fighting the same old battle in a country where sexual harassment and assault commonly go unpunished.

Malik was India's first female wrestler to win an Olympic medal in 2016. Phogat won gold at the 2018 Asian Games, becoming the first Indian woman wrestler to do so in a sport that's dominated by men.

They imagined that, given their achievements, the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would act swiftly on their allegations. More so as one of Modi's favourite stated themes is women's empowerment.

Instead, as their calls for an investigation went unheeded, they spent May eating and sleeping on the pavement in New Delhi's summer heat - and their cause snowballed, slowly pulling in students, trade unionists, opposition politicians and other wrestlers, including men's Olympic bronze winner Bajrang Punia.

"We never imagined it would be such a long struggle. After fighting so hard to become wrestlers, we thought we had earned enough credit to be heard," Phogat told reporters.

After repeated petitions to police and ministers, the pair started an indefinite sit-in at Jantar Mantar, an 18th century landmark in the Indian capital, in late April with just one demand: Singh's arrest. Finally in May, the Supreme Court ordered Delhi police to start an investigation, but this dragged on with no result.

"If this is how well-known women who did the country proud are treated, what hope is there for an ordinary Indian woman to get justice?" said Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research, a Delhi-based women's advocacy group.

"The whole point of the #MeToo movement was that women should not be ignored, that men in powerful positions who are accused must be made accountable but that doesn't apply here."

Observers say the wrestlers' experience has highlighted how little India has changed since the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a public bus in Delhi, an attack which saw international media dub India the 'rape capital of the world'.

The moment of self-reckoning was meant to herald social change to place women on a stronger footing.

But far from retreating, the accused Singh has gone on the attack boasting about his political clout and contemptuously dismissing Phogat and Malik, saying their medals are worthless.

Public outrage escalated on May 28, the day Modi inaugurated the new parliament with Singh as one of the guests.

Two kilometres from parliament, the wrestlers tried to march towards the new symbol of Modi's India but were pinned down by police, detained and later charged with public disorder offences.

An image of the pair apparently laughing in the police vehicle was released across social media, but was later debunked by Bajrang Punia on Twitter as a deep fake apparently circulated to fuzzy public opinion on their cause.

"There has to be a better way than this," Neeraj Chopra, a javelin gold-medallist at the Tokyo Olympics, tweeted later.

In a gesture of despair, two days after their arrest, the wrestlers travelled to the banks of the River Ganges in Haridwar to throw their medals in.

Suddenly, farmers' groups from Haryana - a powerful lobby - threw their weight behind the women, as did the lionised Indian cricket team that won the 1983 World Cup, while the International Olympic Committee described the wrestlers' treatment as "very disturbing".

"Their involvement may alter the situation in the wrestlers' favour," said political analyst Neerja Chowdhary. "I haven't met a single family in Haryana during a visit who did not believe the wrestlers' accusations."

With public pressure building, Chowdhary told This Week in Asia that Modi may ultimately choose to act against Singh.

"He must know how bad this looks. But given how influential Singh is, he probably wants to show him first that he did all he could to save him," she said.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.