Rajendra Sajwan
Indian sports have been having bad days for some time now. Indian Olympic Association and World Hockey Federation (FIH) President Narendra Dhruv Batra has had to step down due to some allegations. There are 12 sports in which there has been an uproar due to mismatch in accounts and misbehavior with female players. A few days ago, a well-known cycling instructor in the country was accused of sexual harassment and indecent behavior.
As a result, the team training in Slovenia had to return home. It is true that the team’s preparation was badly affected but Sports Authority of India’s move was praised in sports circles. This is probably the first time that Sai has shown seriousness to a player’s complaint and has taken immediate action.
It is learned that an inquiry committee has been set up against the head coach of the track sprint team. Based on the preliminary report of the committee, the coach had been continuously harassing and pressurizing the player for some time. The cyclist was so tortured that he had to come forward. The Cycling Federation took forward his complaint and the team had to return from the middle tour as per the instructions of the Sports Ministry.
Now a football coach has been accused of something similar. A player of the team training abroad for the Under-17 Women’s World Cup complained against the coach and coach Monsieur has been called back from the middle tour. A cursory look at Indian sports shows that there have been incidents of harassment of women players in most of the sports.
This is not the first time this has happened in cycling and football. A few years ago, a high official of the Sports Authority of India admitted that women players often keep silent on harassment with them. The complaints of many lower middle class players related to hockey, football, judo, taekwondo, basketball, boxing, archery and various other sports are lying in the cold storage of the department.
A few years ago, a coach who misbehaved with a female player of the School Games Federation’s football team did go behind the bars, but now he is roaming freely. A player from a poor family was found guilty of drowning in Australia, for which the coach was found guilty. The girls had escaped from the coach and went for a swim. This is because the coach was always on the lookout for opportunities and did not leave any opportunity to misbehave with the girls. A few years later, the same coach misbehaved with some players of the boys’ team up to the age of 15, but no action was taken against him even after lodging a complaint.
Due to the 1982 Delhi Asiad, complaints of misbehavior with some cyclists from the Northeast came to the fore and were suppressed. Football players from Kolkata, Manipur, Mumbai, UP, MP, Delhi and many other states made serious allegations against the coaches and officials of the state units but most of them pardoned the culprits for further offenses in view of the locality.