Top Indian female wrestler Sakshi Malik announced on Thursday she was quitting in protest after the country’s wrestling federation elected a new president backed by his predecessor, who has been accused of sexually harassing women athletes.
Sakshi had led protests earlier this year against Brij Bhushan Singh, the former chief of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), in a case that drew international headlines and cast a spotlight on the safety of women athletes in India.
Malik, 31, announced her decision to retire from the sport immediately after Sanjay Singh was elected as the WFI’s new president.
Brij Bhushan Singh, who is also a federal lawmaker, was charged in June with sexually harassing six female wrestlers. He has rejected all the charges against him. His case is pending before the trial court.
“If Brij Bhushan Singh’s business partner and a close aide is elected as the president of WFI, I quit wrestling”, Sakshi told a news conference in New Delhi before leaving the venue with tears in her eyes.
Singh, who is also a six-time parliamentarian and member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), denied any wrongdoing, dramatically stating then that he will hang himself if the accusations are proven to be true.
Asked about Malik’s decision to quit, 66-year-old Singh on Thursday said, “I have nothing to do with it.”
Singh was stripped of his administrative duties in January, and the government promised to investigate the accusations. But Malik and other athletes renewed their protests in April after the government refused to disclose the findings of a panel looking into the incidents.
On Thursday, the WFI voted to replace Brij Bhushan Singh with Sanjay Singh, who defeated Anita Sheoran, another contender for the presidency who had won a gold medal in the 2010 Commonwealth Games and had supported the campaign by the athletes to bring attention to the allegations of abuse.
“It’s a very big victory of truth over lies,” Sanjay Singh told members of the media after securing 40 out of the 47 votes by the federation’s member institutions. He told reporters that he was committed to supporting wrestlers, but did not comment on Malik’s announcement.
The United World Wrestling (UWW), the global wrestling body which suspended the Indian federation in August over the wrestlers’ protest, is yet to comment on the election.
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