Olympic bronze medal-winning former wrestler Sakshi Malik, who was a prominent face of the wrestlers’ protest, including Vinesh Phogat and Bajrang Punia, said that former wrestler-turned-BJP politician Babita Phogat had selfish motives, even though she portrayed herself as a well-wisher for the protesting trio.
The three had alleged that Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the former head of the Wrestling Federation of India, sexually harassed women wrestlers during his tenure. The case is still being heard in a Delhi court.
In her newly released book, ‘Witness’, Sakshi says, “In hindsight, while I know that ending Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s reign was the primary goal for Vinesh and Bajrang, I made the mistake of thinking that that was Babita’s sole intention too.”
“…She didn’t just want to just get rid of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh – she wanted to replace him.”
Sakshi Malik believes the image of last year’s Wrestlers’ Protest was hit by Vinesh Phogat and Bajrang Punia accepting to be exempted from the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou.
The former wrestler concedes that ‘nothing good came’ out of her colleagues accepting the ad-hoc committee’s decision, stating that it was one born out of ‘greed’.
“The old way of thinking selfishly was taking over once again. The people close to Bajrang and Vinesh had started filling their minds with greed. Now they were talking about this exemption from trials for the Games,” Sakshi wrote in the book co-authored with journalist Jonathan Selvaraj. However, she did not give the names of those who influenced the duo.
“…Nothing good came of Bajrang and Vinesh’s decision to take the exemption…their decision badly hurt the image of our protest. It put us in a situation where many supporters started to think that we were actually in the protest for selfish reasons,” the 32-year-old said.
The protest ended after the wrestlers’ march towards the new Parliament Building was halted by the Police on May 28, 2023.
Both Vinesh and Bajrang joined the Congress party before the Haryana assembly elections earlier this month. The former contested and won from the Julana constituency, while the latter was made head of the party’s national farmers’ unit. Before the political plunge, Vinesh endured a heartbreaking sporting low when she was disqualified from the 50kg category Olympic finals in Paris for being 100gm overweight.
The 32-year-old from Haryana also shared in the book that she was sexually molested in her childhood by a tuition teacher, but she didn’t share it with anyone.
“I could not tell my family about it because I thought it was my fault. My tuition teacher from my school days 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.”
In the book, Sakshi also claimed that her parents took away most of her award money, and further alleged that her family was against her match with fellow wrestler Satyawart Kadian, but she chose to take a stand for their relationship.