7 min readApr 30, 2023 08:23 PM IST
First published on: Apr 30, 2023 at 08:17 PM IST
Some of India’s star wrestlers are sitting in protest at the Jantar Mantar in the national capital. They want BJP MP and the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh arrested. Seven wrestlers, including a minor, have accused Singh of sexual harassment. When they first complained three months ago, the sports ministry set up a probe panel under boxer M C Mary Kom to probe the matter. A four-week deadline was set to submit the report. The report is ready though not in the public domain and is reportedly silent on the charges against Singh. Delhi Police refused to file even an FIR against Singh; the wrestlers want him to be booked under POCSO Act, since one of the complainants is a minor. It was only after the Supreme Court intervened that the Delhi Police stepped in. The government and BJP leadership are silent about Singh. The wrestlers had asked politicians to stay out of their protest in January. But this time they have welcomed support from Opposition leaders. Former Haryana Chief Minister and Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, CPM politburo member Brinda Karat, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra visited Jantar Mantar to show solidarity. Sportspersons including Neeraj Chopra, Abhinav Bindra, Sania Mirza, Kapil Dev and Harbhajan Singh have tweeted in support. But IOA president and track legend P T Usha felt that the wrestlers were wrong— she said the protest shows India in a poor light. Tokyo Olympics bronze medallist Bajrang Punia, sitting in protest with Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik and others, made a telling comment while appealing for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention: “When players win medals, you stand with them. When they are on the road, then you are silent.” Story of Indian sports.
The Indian Express editorial wrote: “The sports ministry hasn’t covered itself in glory in its handling of the situation. The ministry claims the seriousness of the allegations means it requires more time to ‘examine’ the probe committee’s report before initiating action. The argument would hold water if this was a one-off case. But there is a history of public authorities dragging their feet on complaints of sexual harassment, as an investigation into the cases of sexual harassment at government-run institutes by this newspaper had revealed. At the same time, when it chooses, the sports ministry has ensured swift action. This was evident in the case involving a cycling coach, whose contract was immediately terminated after an athlete complained of sexual harassment and an FIR was filed within days.”
So, why the silence in the case of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh? As Sandeep Dwivedi wrote on our pages: “A history-sheeter as federation chief – is it a factoid that Indians can proudly flaunt at wrestling halls around the world?” Singh was reportedly booked under TADA for allegedly harbouring Dawood Ibrahim associates in the 90s and his name figures in several ongoing court cases. A report by Shyamlal Yadav says Singh, a Thakur leader from UP, has been an education baron running over 50 self-financing colleges. He, or his wife, has been an MP since 1991, losing just once in 1998. Clearly, this politician wields so much influence, that his party and government are willing to risk public censure rather than pull him up.
Jagmati Sangwan and Indu Agnihotri write: “The main factor underlying this state of affairs is the utter lack of political will to implement the law on the part of the state. This ensures that justice is neither certain, nor speedy and almost routinely denied. The result is that perpetrators of violence against women are never punished, nor are those responsible for implementing the law held accountable for their actions and inactions.” Sangwan and Agnihotri write that the battle for women to live and work in dignity is critical to the idea of India.
It is not known if Anand Mohan Singh, a gangster turned politician from Bihar, shares Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s passion for sports. But there seems to be a lot in common between them, at least in the way their friends in politics are willing to bat for them. Politicians — from the JD-U and RJD — bent the system to let Anand Mohan walk free from a Bihar jail this week. Anand Mohan had been serving life imprisonment for the murder of G Krishnaiah, the then district collector of Gopalganj, in 1994. A tweak in the jail manuals rules helped the government to remit Anand Mohan’s conviction. This is what the Gujarat government seems to have done for the convicts in the Bilks Bano case. Chandrabhan Prasad indicts politicians who claim the political high ground in the name of social justice but are willing to back a Thakur leader who is convicted for killing a Dalit IAS officer. The Indian Express editorial writes that Anand Mohan’s freedom stains Sushasan Babu Nitish Kumar’s governance record and insults the memory of the murdered officer. Because “Anand Mohan is no singular criminal politician, he is representative of an ecosystem wherein crime, caste and politics mingle to form a deadly cocktail”.
Meanwhile, the tall leader of Punjab and Opposition politics, Parkash Singh Badal died this week at the age of 95. The Indian Express editorial writes: “The Shiromani Akali Dal he helmed and helped transform from a Panthic party to a party of Punjabiyat was a regional force, but Badal, like the late DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, transcended the limits of regionalism to articulate a politics that subsumed ethno-nationalist impulses under the rubric of a federal India. In that sense, Badal was more of a national leader than a provincial politician.” Badal was a healing presence, as Opposition leader and chief minister, as Punjab struggled to leave behind the tragedy and trauma of the violence-hit 1980s and 90s.
This nation listened to the 100th episode of Mann ki Baat this Sunday. F Sheheryar, a former director general of All India Radio, writes how they thought after the 2014 general election that the new Prime Minister could make “good radio” and requested him to create “an apolitical bridge between the elector and the elected”. The rest, as they say, is history.
Thank you,
Amrith
Amrith Lal is Deputy Editor with the Opinion team
Wrestlers Sakshi Malik, Vinesh Phogat and Bajrang Punia started the protest on Wednesday. (Photo: Praveen Khanna) 
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