- Friday, May 03, 2024
“These medals are our lives, our souls. There would be no reason to live after immersing them in the Ganga today. We will stage a hunger strike until death at India Gate after that,” the protesting athletes said in a statement.
By: Shubham Ghosh
Some of India’s top wrestlers, who were recently detained and removed from a site in Jantar Mantar in Delhi where they have been protesting against the chief of the country’s wrestling federation for allegedly sexually harassing female wrestlers, including a minor, have said that they would immerse their medals in river Ganges in Haridwar in the northern state of Uttarakhand on Tuesday (30) and sit on an indefinite hunger strike at the India Gate in the national capital.
The protesting wrestlers include Olympic medal-winning wrestlers such as Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia and two-time World Championshops medal winner Vinesh Phogat among others. They posted a statement on their respective Twitter handles declaring they would go to the holy city of Haridwar and immerse their medals in the river at 6 pm local time.
“These medals are our lives, our souls. There would be no reason to live after immersing them in the Ganga (Ganges) today. We will stage a hunger strike until death at India Gate after that,” the statement in Hindi read.
The athletes have been protesting against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, president of the Wrestling Federation of India and a parliamentarian from prime minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. While they have demanded his arrest, Singh has denied the allegations.
The wrestlers faced the wrath of the Delhi Police on Sunday (28) when they tried to march towards the new parliament building which was being inaugurated by Modi. A fierce tussle started as the wrestlers allegedly tried to break the security cordon. Disturbing scenes emanated showing some of India’s internationally acclaimed wrestlers getting pushed and shoved by police personnel, drawing reactions from some top sportspersons and opposition leaders of the country. A case of rioting was also filed against the wrestlers who were released later on Sunday.
In the joint statement, the wrestlers also said that the prime minister “who calls us our daughters”, did not even once show his concern for them.
“Rather, he invited the ‘oppressor’ (Brij Bhushan Singh) to the inauguration of the new Parliament building. He even posed for photographs in bright white clothes. We have been stained by this brightness,” it said.
The statement said, “Where is the place for the daughters of India? Have we been reduced to people indulging in mere sloganeering or do we have an agenda to come to power?”
“We are going to immerse these medals in 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,” it said.
