The 2016 Rio Olympics medallist Indian wrestler Sakshi Malik has unfolded some of the most heartwrenching chapters of her career in her memoir, Witness. Malik, who quit the sport a few months ago, made an explosive claim, alleging former Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh of sexual harassment. In her autobiography, the wrestler spoke of an incident from the 2012 Asian Junior Championship in Almaty (Kazakhstan) where the then wrestling body chief, Brij Bhushan, tried to harass her in his hotel room sexually.
A report in the Times of India, highlighting excerpts from her book, said that she was sent to Brij Bushan’s hotel room on the pretext of speaking to her parents on the phone. But, what happened later became one of the most traumatic incidents of her life.
“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.”
Sakshi further alleged, “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.”
It isn’t the first time that the wrestler had to face such sexual trauma in her life. She narrated another incident from her childhood where one of her tuition teachers touched her inappropriately.
“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 wrote in the book. Malik, later, told her mother about this incident.
“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.”
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