Ganesh Kendale
Trouble had a way of finding me, writes retired wrestler Sakshi Malik in her memoir, ‘Witness’. It found her at age 19 when fresh from winning gold at 2012 Asian Junior Championship at Kazakhstan’s Almaty, Malik faced what she describes as one of the most traumatic experiences of her life.
In the autobiography, Malik, who became the first Indian women wrestler to win a bronze at Rio Olympics, writes that she was taken to wrestling federation chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s hotel room after her win on pretext of speaking to her parents from Singh’s mobile.She alleges, “Singh connected me to my parents. It seemed harmless. When I spoke to them telling them about my match and my medal, I remember thinking that perhaps nothing unsavoury might happen after all. But right after I ended the call, he tried to molest me while I was seated on his bed. I pushed him off and started to cry.”
She alleges, “He stepped back after that. I think he realised that I wasn’t going to go along with what he wanted. He started saying that he had put his arms around me ‘papa jaise’ (as a father would). But I knew that was not what it was. I ran out of his room all the way back to mine, weeping.”
Malik and five other women wrestlers had staged a protest at Jantar Mantar in Jan 2023 accusing Singh of multiple incidents of sexual harassment. The wrestlers filed FIRs and in May this year, a Delhi court framed charges of sexual harassment, intimidation and outraging the modesty of women against Singh who is ex-Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief and six-time Lok Sabha MP. Singh has previously denied these allegations terming them a political conspiracy against him. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges in court. Singh did not respond to multiple calls and messages asking for a response to Malik’s charges.
In the memoir written with Jonathan Selvaraj, Malik says Singh made repeated calls urging her to “stay in his favour”, offering facilities like protein supplements. Malik writes that she shared information about the Almaty incident with her camp roommate Anita Sheoran and her mother. “Although I didn’t intend to spread the story, it did. Everyone knew what happened with me at Almaty. No one spoke out about it. Neither did I.”
Malik says fear and anxiety affected her performance at 2012 Junior World Championships a few months later where she was a favourite after winning a bronze in the previous edition. She ended up in 17th place. This was not the only occasion when Malik had to face sexual harassment, she says. She was assaulted by a tuition teacher when she went to his home to study. “I had been molested in my childhood too, but for a long time I could not tell my family about it as I thought it was my fault. My tuition teacher used to harass me. He would call me over to his place for classes at odd times and sometimes tried to touch me. I was scared to go for my tuition classes but I could never tell my mom. This continued for a long time and I kept quiet about it,” she writes.
Malik finally opened up to her mother who was supportive of her. “My mother supported me not just during the incident with the tuition teacher but also when Singh started pursuing me. I tried to forget about what had happened at Almaty. That’s what my parents advised me to do too. They told me to focus on my training and competition. It doesn’t seem like much today, but I was grateful that I was allowed to continue to train, at least.”
