Opinion Express View on pause in the wrestlers’ protest: Talk and listen

Forty-six days after restarting their stir to demand action against Wrestling Federation of India chief and BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who is accused of sexual harassment, some of India’s top women wrestlers have agreed to pause their protest. This comes after a six-hour meeting with Sports Minister Anurag Thakur, who assured them that a chargesheet against Singh will be filed by June 15. Could the government have lent a sympathetic ear sooner? It could have avoided such painful scenes as those the nation witnessed on May 28, when Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik, Sangeeta Phogat and Bajrang Punia were dragged on the streets and detained as they attempted to march to the new Parliament building. Or when the wrestlers, hurt by the heavy-handed police action against them, stood on the banks of the Ganga in Haridwar, deciding only at the last minute not to immerse their medals in the river.

“How many times do victims have to speak up before they get justice?” was Vinesh Phogat’s anguished and poignant question in an article in this newspaper, recounting the occasions — before the Oversight Committee, an Indian Olympics Association committee, the police and a magistrate — on which the seven women wrestlers (including one minor, who has withdrawn her complaint subsequently) had to revisit their harrowing experience of being touched inappropriately, stalked and intimidated. It’s not easy, she wrote, for women coming from villages to demand police action against a powerful man, knowing that it can jeopardise their arduously put together careers. This government speaks proudly of celebrating “nari shakti”. And yet, for far too long, it refused to reach out, or listen.

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Express Opinion | Unequal before the law: The case of Brij Bhushan Singh

Until Thakur’s meeting with the wrestlers — the first to be arranged publicly since the second protest began on April 23 — there had been little give in the government’s stance. The first sit-in at Jantar Mantar, which began on January 18, ended when the protestors were assured that an Oversight Committee would be formed to look into the allegations against Singh but that positive signal soon fizzled out when the Committee submitted its report and the government failed to make it public. As the wrestlers returned to Jantar Mantar and moved the Supreme Court, the dragging of feet and lack of empathy from the ruling party and government continued, even as Singh continued to project, unchecked, the impression of being protected and patronised by the powers that be. Now that it has finally and belatedly shown a willingness to talk and listen to the protesters, the government must ensure that the law takes its course and their faith in the process of justice is restored.