Four women wrestlers on Friday moved a Delhi court challenging the acquittal of former Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh in a sexual harassment case, calling the trial court’s August 3 judgment “archaic” and based on “stereotypical assumptions”.
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. The witnesses included the three victims as well as officials of WFI and the Sports Authority of India (SAI). A Delhi court acquitted Singh , former Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP ) lawmaker from Uttar Pradesh, and former WFI assistant secretary Vinod Tomar for lack of evidence on August 3, two years after the trial began. 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. On April 28, 2023, on the Supreme Court’s intervention, the Delhi Police registered two first information reports (FIRs), the present case 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. The sexual harassment allegations against Singh spanned between 2012 and 2022, according to both the FIRs. In June 2023, police filed a chargesheet against Singh and Tomar, concluding that there was sufficient evidence to prosecute the accused for the offences. The court took cognisance of the chargesheet on July 7, 2023, and summoned both the accused. They were granted bail on July 20. A year later, in May 2024, the court framed charges against both the accused, to which they pleaded not guilty and claimed trial. 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 plea said that the judgment of acquittal was “unsustainable in law” and was based on conjectures and surmises, instead of well-settled principles of law. “The judgment is unsustainable in law and is founded on a manifestly erroneous and selective appreciation of the evidence on record,” the petition said. The appeal further argued that the impugned order “proceeded on conjectures and surmises” and failed to apply binding and well-settled principles of law. “The impugned order, in material part, rests its reasoning on, archaic and stereotypical assumptions about the expected behaviour of victims of sexual assault and harassment, rather than on a fair, evidence-based assessment after taking into account the circumstances of the victims,” it said. the court 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” While acquitting Singh. “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 said. “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,” the court held. “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 said 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 criminal revision petition was moved by the wrestlers through senior advocate Rebecca John before the court of special judge Digvinay Singh of Rouse Avenue Courts and is scheduled to come up for hearing on Saturday.
Singh had been 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), while co-accused and former WFI assistant secretary Vinod Tomar had been charged with criminal intimidation. However, they resumed in April 2023 after wrestlers claimed no meaningful action. In a detailed judgment, additional chief judicial magistrate Ashwini Panwar had 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 further observed that before sitting on a dharna (protest), 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. The court added: “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 maximum punishment for the offences entailed a five-year imprisonment. Singh, formerly a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Uttar Pradesh’s Kaiserganj, was subsequently removed as the federation head owing to the allegations. Tomar, a close aide of Singh, was also suspended following the allegations. After the Union sports ministry assured the protesting athletes that a committee would be formed to investigate the allegations, the protests were suspended.
The court held that the conspiracy against the accused appeared to have been hatched by “coaches of the Mahadev Academy” and two prosecution witnesses. 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 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 judgment 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. “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 said. 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 said that they were “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 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. 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 last year, however, a Delhi court had closed the POCSO case against Singh after the minor victim, now an adult, retracted her allegations of sexual harassment made against him.
