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Rio Olympics bronze medallist Sakshi Malik made a shocking revelation about Babita Phogat’s role in the wrestlers’ protests last year. Malik claimed that it was former wrestler and BJP leader Babita Phogat, who encouraged wrestlers to begin the protests against former Wrestling Federation of India Chief Brij Bhushan Singh. She said that Phogat wanted to become the WFI President and it is why she encouraged the wrestlers to protest.
Malik stated that Phogat had hosted a meeting with several wrestlers and urged them to protest against the misconduct including the instances of molestation. She, in an interview to India Today TV said, Babita Phogat approached us with the idea of protesting against Brij Bhushan Singh because she had her own agenda — she wanted to become the WFI president. "There are rumours that Congress supported our protest, but that’s false. In fact, two BJP leaders helped us secure permission to protest in Haryana - Babita Phogat and Tirath Rana."
Bajrang and Vinesh’s decision to take exemption hurt image of our protest: Sakshi Mailk
In her memoir, ‘Witness’, Sakshi made shocking claims regarding the Tokyo Olympics 2020 medallist Bajrang Punia and Vinesh Phogat. She said that their decision to accept exemption from the 2023 Asian Wrestling Championships hurt the image of the protests. She wrote, “The old way of thinking selfishly was taking over once again. The people close to Bajrang and Vinesh had started filling their minds with greed. Now they were talking about this exemption from trials for the Games.”
“Nothing good came of Bajrang and Vinesh’s decision to take the exemption. Their decision badly hurt the image of our protest. It put us in a situation where many supporters started to think that we were actually in the protest for selfish reasons,” Malik added as quoted by Firstpost.
