In a big development on the protests relating to the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) and the allegations against their disgraced president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the Sports Ministry has now scraped the upcoming May 7 elections of the WFI and will set up an ad-hoc committee, completely dissolving the WFI as it stands.
The new committee will be set up by the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) in the next 45 days, and this committee will be responsible for the selection of the grapplers for tournaments as well as looking after the daily work of the WFI.
Meanwhile, the six-member oversight committee which was led by Olympic-medal-winning boxer MC Mary Kom has found that there was no proper Internal Oversight Committee (ICC) to address the issues of the wrestlers which meant that there was no way for the WFI to address the problems of the wrestlers for grievance redressal.
This comes after India's top wrestlers, including Bajrang Punia, Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik restarted the protests against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who has been accused of sexual harassment.
Three months ago, the initial protests against the atrocities of Brij Bhushan were held but more recently, the wrestlers went back on dharna at Jantar Mantar on Sunday, April 24, after the Connaught Place Police Station did not register an FIR against him for sexual harassment involving seven different women, including a minor.
During the press conference on Sunday, Sakshi Malik, 2016 Rio Olympic Bronze medallist revealed the reason for reigniting their protests against the WFI.
“Complained at the CP police two days back. 7 girls had filed a complaint but till now the FIR has not been filed. One girl is even a minor among these girls so it should be a POCSO case. Request that, please an FIR is filed as soon as possible and is punished accordingly (confirming that a sexual harassment case has been filed against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh),” she said.
"We have waited for two and a half months and had a lot of faith that the government will give us their support. But since the oversight committee was formed, he has received no intimation about whether the report has been submitted or not. We have returned because we want to know what the result is. Because people are now thinking that we were wrong and we lied."
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