A Delhi court on Monday acquitted former Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh in a sexual harassment case lodged by six women wrestlers, bringing the curtain down on a landmark case that involved some of India’s top athletes sitting on unprecedented street protests to push for action.
Additional chief judicial magistrate Ashwini Panwar cleared Singh – a former Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Uttar Pradesh – and former WFI assistant secretary Vinod Tomar of insufficient evidence, two years after the trial began.
“Both accused Brij Bhushan Singh and Vinod Tomar are hereby acquitted in the present case,” Panwar said.
The detailed judgment, running into nearly 260 pages, was not available at the time of going to print. Additional public prosecutor Manish Rawat told HT, “We will examine the judgment once we receive a certified copy and plan to challenge it before the appropriate court”.
“We are deeply saddened that the court did not find Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh guilty of the allegations of sexual violence made by the women wrestlers. From the very beginning, the entire administration, the government, and the system have been engaged in protecting Brij Bhushan,” World Championship medallist Vinesh Phogat, one of the petitioners, said on X.
“The women wrestlers have instructed their lawyers to appeal against this decision, and the appeal will be filed as soon as possible. We have not lost hope, and the wrestlers will continue their fight,” added Phogat, now a Congress legislator in Haryana.
Singh – a strongman from Kaiserganj whose son Karan Bhushan Singh succeeded him as MP and whose associate Sanjay Singh now heads WFI – hailed the decision.
“I said on the very first day that if the allegations are true, I will hang myself. I am very happy that I have been acquitted today. It is good news for me and good news for my supporters. I cannot say anything more than that,” he said, beaming after the verdict.
WFI chief Sanjay Singh also welcomed the verdict. “These allegations were baseless. Our wrestling has suffered greatly because of these accusations,” he said.
Singh was charged under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 354A (sexual harassment) and 506(1) (criminal intimidation) and Tomar was charged with criminal intimidation. The maximum punishment for the offences entailed a five-year imprisonment.
The high-profile case first burst into public attention in 2023 when Tokyo Olympics bronze medallist Bajrang Punia, Rio Games bronze medallist Sakshi Malik, and double World Championships medallist Vinesh Phogat camped at Jantar Mantar for 38 days in the summer, demanding police action against Singh, who had by then ruled Indian wrestling for over a decade. The unprecedented protests marked a rare instance in India of top women sportspersons bandying together to demand justice in a case of prolonged sexual harassment. As support for the athletes grew, Delhi Police controversially stopped a planned march to the new Parliament, manhandled the wrestlers in public view, and detained them.
Under pressure, the government sent then Union sports minister Anurag Thakur to meet the wrestlers. On June 3, 2023, Punia, Malik and her husband Satyawart Kadian met Union home minister Amit Shah. On April 28, 2023, on the Supreme Court’s intervention, the Delhi Police registered two first information reports (FIR) – one based on the complaint of six adult women wrestlers against Singh and Tomar, and the second case against Singh, invoking sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act on the allegations of a minor wrestler.
According to the FIRs, the sexual harassment allegations against Singh spanned 2012 and 2022. The first FIR detailed years of abuse and alleged that Singh offered to buy a wrestler supplements if she gave into his sexual advances, called a wrestler to his bed and hugged her, grabbed a minor girl’s breasts, slid his hand down a woman’s shirt and goaded wrestlers to spend time alone with him during most tournaments. According to one of the complainants, most women wrestlers would avoid leaving their rooms alone during tournaments and would largely stick together to keep the BJP MP’s advances at bay.
In April 2023, Singh’s tenure as WFI chief ended.
On May 26 that year, however, a Delhi court closed the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) case against Singh after the minor victim, now an adult, retracted her allegations of sexual harassment made against him. This came after the Delhi Police filed a closure report in the case in June 2023, concluding “no corroborative evidence” in its investigation.
In May 2024, the court framed charges against both the accused, who pleaded not guilty.
The trial, held as in-camera proceedings, began in July 2024, and saw 32 witnesses, nine of whom were dropped by the prosecution during the trial. The witnesses included three victims apart from officials of WFI and Sports Authority of India (SAI).
Two of the six women wrestlers turned hostile during the trial.
Further, the court refused to take cognisance of the allegations of one of the victims after noting that her allegations dated back to 2012 and section 468 of CrPC barred the court from taking cognisance of the offence after the lapse of the three-year period of limitation.
The complainant’s allegations also suffered from the lack of sanction on the prosecution’s end as one of the incidents was said to be committed outside India and required previous sanction of the central government, in line with section 188 of CrPC.
This left the prosecution with the testimonies of the three complainants.
The prosecution, led by additional public prosecutor Manish Rawat, argued before court that all the witnesses corroborated the versions of the victims.
“It was my submission that the four complainant witnesses made powerful testimonies before the court. Other witnesses had corroborated these testimonies, and so this judgment of acquittal is deeply, deeply disturbing,” said senior advocate Rebecca John, who represented the women wrestlers.
Singh, represented by advocates Rajiv Mohan, Rishabh Bhati and Rehan Khan, had denied the allegations, calling them “motivated” and a “bid to remove him from the post of WFI”.