The athletes protesting against sexual harassment by a top official threaten to throw their medals in holy town of Haridwar.
India’s top wrestlers have threatened to hurl their medals into the river Ganges as they demand the arrest of the head of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) over sexual harassment allegations.
In a joint statement issued on Tuesday that intensifies their month-old protest, the wrestlers, including Olympic medallists Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia, spelled out their next step.
“We are going to immerse these medals into 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,” said the statement in Hindi.
“These medals are our lives, our souls. There would be no reason to live after immersing them into the Ganga today,” it said.
The athletes said they will throw the medals away in Haridwar, a town considered holy by Hindus.
After tossing the medals away, the athletes said they will return to capital New Delhi to begin a hunger strike at the British-era India Gate memorial.
The wrestlers had been camping in New Delhi since April 23 demanding action against WFI president Brijbhushan Sharan Singh, who has denied any wrongdoing. Singh is also a parliamentarian from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Several of the protesting wrestlers were briefly detained by the Delhi Police on Sunday and their camp site was cleared after they tried to move towards India’s new parliament building, inaugurated by Modi.
Singh, 66, has been stripped of his administrative powers but the wrestlers are seeking his arrest over allegations of sexual harassment against female wrestlers.
The protesting athletes have also sought the intervention of the Supreme Court, which has directed the police to register a case against Singh.
Sumber: www.aljazeera.com
