‘Fabricated’, ‘politically motivated’: Court on allegations against Brij Bhushan Singh

Last week, a Delhi court acquitted Singh, former BJP MP from Uttar Pradesh, and Vinod Tomar, former WFI assistant secretary, for lack of evidence, two years after the trial began.

A Delhi court, while acquitting former Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, had held that the sexual harassment allegations against him were “false” and “fabricated”, and part of a “deep conspiracy which seems to be politically motivated”.

In April 2023, Singh’s tenure as WFI chief ended. (PTI)

Last week, a Delhi court acquitted Singh, former BJP MP from Uttar Pradesh, and Vinod Tomar, former WFI assistant secretary, for lack of evidence, two years after the trial began.

In a detailed judgment, parts of which HT has seen, additional chief judicial magistrate Ashwini Panwar observed: “I have no hitch in saying that the version given by the victims...discredits the prosecution case completely and also shows that the entire allegations are false and fabricated, made against the accused persons in a deep conspiracy which seems to be politically motivated.”

The court held that the conspiracy against the accused appeared to have been hatched by “coaches of the Mahadev Academy” and two prosecution witnesses.

Throughout the judgement, the court highlighted “material contradictions” between successive versions of the witnesses, documentary evidence that was “inconsistent” with the alleged dates and circumstances, and the “absence of contemporaneous complaints” despite the alleged incidents having purportedly been witnessed by or disclosed to several people.

The court dealt with an alleged incident that took place during an Olympic qualification in Mongolia, noting material contradictions in the complainant’s versions regarding the time and place of the alleged incident.

It said: “In one statement, the incident was stated to have taken place in Turkey in 2015, whereas in the subsequent version, the same was stated to have occurred in Mongolia in 2016.”

The court held: “The discrepancy is not a mere variation in peripheral details; it concerns the fundamental particulars of the alleged occurrence, namely, the country and the year in which the incident purportedly took place.”

Over another incident that allegedly took place inside a Delhi stadium in 2018, the court noted that although the alleged occurrence took place in the presence of several people, including family members, coaches and athletes, no independent eyewitness came forward to depose against the accused. The court said: “...it is not the natural conduct of the persons surrounding and watching her suffer; the least they could have done was to get her out of that situation or confront the accused.”

The court said one witness stated that the accused was standing with his hand on the complainant’s shoulder, but “there is no reference to having seen any forcible hug or any attempt by PW-5 (one of the complainants) to push the accused away”.

The judgement further emphasised the statements of two witnesses who turned hostile during the trial, noting that they told the court they had been made to participate in the allegations at the instance of coaches associated with the Mahadev Academy.

The court stated: “They [hostile witnesses] categorically denied that any sexual harassment had been committed against them by the accused and stated that their statements under Section 164 of the CrPC had been given under pressure and threat.”

The court further observed that before sitting on a dharna, one of the complainants had made no allegations of sexual harassment, and no name of any female wrestler who had faced sexual harassment had been mentioned.

“Then the female wrestlers who were selected came forward and the same/similar allegations were incorporated in the tailor-made formal complaints drafted in a fancy manner, with similar excessive decoration, and the same were filed before the police,” the court held.

The judge stated there appeared to be a “similarity in the allegations” made by all victims, with the alleged instances said to have occurred in public spaces in the presence of several people. However, the judge added that there were material contradictions in the versions of the victims and eyewitnesses regarding the claims, creating “more than sufficient reasonable doubt in my mind to discredit the prosecution story”.

The court said that of the five victims whose allegations formed the basis of charges against the accused, two had not supported the prosecution’s case. They stated that they had been “forced/pressurised” to give their statements at the instance of two prosecution witnesses, the court said.

“Nothing has been proved by the prosecution which shows that these two victims did not support the case of the prosecution due to an overt act attributable to the accused persons,” the court held.

The court held: “The allegations appear to be imperfect to be true, seem rehearsed and well-practised as well as planted, more so when the complaints have been filed after a long period of time.”

The court also examined the “subsequent conduct” of the witnesses following the alleged incidents of harassment, observing that they had maintained “cordial relations” with the accused and continued to interact with him at public functions.

Singh was charged under Sections 354 (assault or criminal force to a woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 354A (sexual harassment) and 506(1) (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Tomar was charged with criminal intimidation. The offences carried a maximum punishment of five years’ imprisonment.

The high-profile case first drew 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 more than a decade.

The unprecedented protests marked a rare instance in India of top women sportspersons banding together to demand justice in a case involving alleged prolonged sexual harassment. As support for the athletes grew, Delhi Police controversially stopped a planned march to the new Parliament building, 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, following the Supreme Court’s intervention, Delhi Police registered two first information reports (FIRs): one based on the complaint of six adult women wrestlers against Singh and Tomar, and the second against Singh under 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 to 2022. The first FIR detailed years of alleged abuse and stated that Singh offered to buy supplements for a wrestler if she gave in to 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 encouraged wrestlers to spend time alone with him during most tournaments.

According to one of the complainants, most women wrestlers avoided leaving their rooms alone during tournaments and largely stayed 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 POCSO case against Singh after the minor victim, who was by then an adult, retracted her allegations of sexual harassment against him. This came after Delhi Police filed a closure report in the case in June 2023, concluding that there was “no corroborative evidence” in its investigation.

In May 2024, the court framed charges against both accused, who pleaded not guilty.

The trial, held in-camera, began in July 2024 and saw 32 witnesses testify. Nine of them were dropped by the prosecution during the trial. The witnesses included three victims, as well as officials of the WFI and the Sports Authority of India (SAI).

Singh, represented by advocates Rajiv Mohan, Rishabh Bhati and Rehan Khan, denied the allegations, calling them “motivated” and a “bid to remove him from the post of WFI”.