Athletes protesting against alleged sexual harassment by a top official threaten to throw their medals in the river in the temple town of Haridwar.
India's Sakshi Malik poses with her bronze medal for the women's wrestling freestyle 58kg competition at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
File: Markus Schreiber/AP]
Published On 30 May 2023
India’s top wrestlers have threatened to hurl their medals into the river Ganges as they demand the arrest of the head of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) over sexual harassment allegations.
In a joint statement issued on Tuesday intensifying their month-old protest, the wrestlers, including Olympic medallists Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia, spelled out their next step.
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“We are going to immerse these medals into river Ganga … The more sacred we consider the Ganga, the more sacredly we had achieved these medals by toiling hard. These medals are sacred for the whole country and the right place should be in the Ganga itself,” said their statement in Hindi.
“These medals are our lives, our souls. There would be no reason to live after immersing them into the Ganga today,” it said
.
Malik, in blue, is detained by police during a protest in New Delhi on Sunday [File: Altaf Qadri/AP]
The athletes said they will throw the medals away in Haridwar, a temple town on the banks of the river considered holy by Hindus.
The act echoes iconic boxer Muhammad Ali famously throwing his 1960 Rome Olympics gold into the Ohio River after he was denied entry into a restaurant in Louisville due to racial segregation in the United States.
After throwing their medals away, the Indian athletes said they will return to capital New Delhi to begin a hunger strike at the British-era India Gate memorial.
The wrestlers had been camping in New Delhi since April 23 demanding action against WFI president Brijbhushan Sharan Singh, who has denied any wrongdoing. Singh is also a parliamentarian from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The athletes said they will throw the medals away in Haridwar, a temple town on the banks of the river considered holy by Hindus.
The act echoes iconic boxer Muhammad Ali famously throwing his 1960 Rome Olympics gold into the Ohio River after he was denied entry into a restaurant in Louisville due to racial segregation in the United States.
After throwing their medals away, the Indian athletes said they will return to capital New Delhi to begin a hunger strike at the British-era India Gate memorial.
The wrestlers had been camping in New Delhi since April 23 demanding action against WFI president Brijbhushan Sharan Singh, who has denied any wrongdoing. Singh is also a parliamentarian from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Indian wrestlers, from right, Bajrang Punia, Sangita Phogat and Vinesh Phogat embrace ahead of their protest march towards the new parliament building in New Delhi [File: Shonal Ganguly/AP]
Several of the protesting wrestlers were briefly detained by the Delhi Police on Sunday and their campsite was cleared after they tried to move towards India’s new parliament building, inaugurated by Modi.
Singh, 66, has been stripped of his administrative powers but the wrestlers are seeking his arrest over allegations of sexual harassment towards female wrestlers.
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