SONIPAT (Haryana): An Olympic wrestler on Saturday criticised the pace of a police inquiry into sexual harassment accusations against the chief of India’s national wrestling body.

Vinesh Phogat, a two-time Olympian who has accused Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh of sexually abusing her, said she has also been hurt by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence on the issue. Phogat is one of seven female athletes to have lodged a police case against Singh accusing him of sexually harassing them.

Singh, who is also a federal lawmaker from Modi’s ruling party, has denied allegations of making sexual advances, groping and threatening female athletes if they refused to meet him alone.

“I have only felt a deep sense of humiliation since I mustered the courage to protest,” Phogat said in her first interview since she and fellow wrestlers were forced out of a protest site by the police last month. Delhi Police have filed two cases against Singh, including one under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. Phogat, 28, who is the first Indian female wrestler to win both the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games gold, claims that during training camps and tournaments Singh would use “every possible way to single out young athletes and grope them repeatedly”.

“It was the same disgusting pattern over and over again and I am among the victims,” she said at her residence in northern Haryana state.

In her police complaint Phogat said she contemplated suicide after the “mental trauma” but felt reinvigorated after a 2021 meeting with Modi, who promised to look into the complaints by the female wrestlers.

Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2023