Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, June 9: As the Delhi police stepped up its probe into the complaints of sexual harassment against the Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh on Friday, international referee Jagbir Singh said he had seen the accused WFI chief misbehaving with the female wrestlers many times since 2013.
Mr. Brij Bhushan, who is also a BJP Member of Parliament, is currently under scrutiny after top Indian wrestlers including Bajrang Punia, Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik, demanded his arrest for alleged sexual harassment of women grapplers.
The top wrestlers who had been agitating since January for action against WFI chief had on Wednesday agreed to defer their agitation till June 15 after a six-hour meeting with the Union Minister for Sports Anurag Thakur. A common ground was found where the wrestlers agreed to suspend their agitation till June 15 and the Minister assured them that the Delhi police would complete the probe by then and file a charge-sheet in the case. Thakur said he heard all the demands of the wrestlers and assured them of full cooperation from the government.
Following the agreement between the wrestlers and the government, the Delhi police was told to step up the investigation to be able to complete it by June 15.
“I am an UWW referee since 2007 and I have been a referee before the birth of the protesting wrestlers. I also know Mr. Brij Bhushan for a long time,” Jagbir Singh said. “I couldn’t say much because until the girls register complaints, I could not do anything. But I saw the episode with my own eyes and felt bad,” he said.
Jagbir, who has been a coach-cum-international referee since 2007, said he witnessed Brij Bhushan’s misbehaviour with his own eyes on numerous occasions. “After he became the president during his second tour in 2013 in Kazakhstan, the president told us ‘I will feed you Indian food today’ and he arranged a party in the junior wrestlers’ hotel,” he claimed.
“Mr. Brij Bhushan and his accomplices from Thailand were drunk and they misbehaved with the girls and I was a witness to that. In 2022, I witnessed something. Whenever the president used to travel inside the country for national tournaments, two to three girls were always with him but we could never protest. We have seen that with our eyes.” Jagbir, in fact, has corroborated the protesting wrestler’s allegations in his testimony to the Delhi Police.
Asked about Brij Bhushan’s denial of all the allegations, Jagbir said, “Does a thief ever say I have stolen? Every culprit will make these excuses.” He, however, refused to comment on the U-turn of the minor girl’s father. “I will not like to comment on statement of the minor girl’s father. I even don’t know who is the minor wrestler. Whatever I am saying is all about what I have seen with my own eyes. On 25th March 2022, after a trial, there was a photo session and a girl felt uncomfortable while standing with the president and left the spot,” he said.
Stepping up the probe as per the government’s instructions, the Delhi police on Friday took a woman wrestler to his office in Delhi to recreate the sequence of events that led to the alleged crime. Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s official residence houses the office of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI).
A Delhi Police official said the wrestler, accompanied by women police personnel, was taken to the WFI office at 1.30 pm.” “They were there for half an hour. They asked her to recreate the scene and recall the places where she faced harassment,” the police official said.
Hours after the police left the place, wrestler Vinesh Phogat, who was among those leading the protest, took to Twitter to express her disappointment at media reports that claimed that the wrestlers had reached the WFI office for a compromise.
“This is the power of Brij Bhushan. He is harassing women wrestlers by using his muscle power, political power and running false narratives, and his arrest is necessary. If the police arrests him instead of breaking us, there is hope for justice, otherwise not. Women wrestlers had gone to the crime scene for police investigation, but it was flashed in the media that they had gone for a compromise,” she tweeted in Hindi. Bajrang Punia, another protesting wrestler, also posted similar tweets.
The Delhi Police’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the sexual harassment allegations against Singh is likely to submit in the court its investigation report in the two cases registered against him by next week, officials said on Wednesday. As part of its investigation, the SIT has questioned more than 180 people, the Delhi Police officials said.
The Delhi Police registered two FIRs against Singh following directions of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, on April 25, had ordered that the names of the complainant wrestlers, seeking registration of the FIRs against the WFI chief, be redacted from judicial records. “The identity of the petitioners shall be redacted. Only the redacted petition shall be made available in the public domain…,” it had ordered.
