It started with a fight over property. It ended with a former junior national champion, Sagar Dhankhar, getting beaten to death. And an ex-world champion, a two-time Olympic medallist, Sushil Kumar, getting arrested after being on the run for close to three weeks.
On Sunday, Sushil, who put India on world wrestling’s map, hid his face behind a yellow-white towel as Delhi Police’s Special Cell personnel paraded him in front of cameras. His friend and fellow wrestler Ajay Sherawat, wearing a black t-shirt with ‘Mercy for animals’ inscribed on it, was next to him.
The two had been criss-crossing state borders evading cops since May 5, the day after the incident. Both are mentioned in the FIR and have been accused of murder, abduction and criminal conspiracy.
It’s a dramatic fall from grace of an athlete who medalled at consecutive Olympics — an unprecedented feat in a country that had a grand total of two individual medals in the last century. As fate would have it, the alleged venue for the deadly clash that triggered this sequence of events was Sushil’s permanent base for more than two decades and the country’s most prolific wrestling assembly line – New Delhi’s Chhatrasal Stadium.
ntil the night of the incident, May 4, Sushil was said to be preparing hard at his famous alma mater for that final push to make the cut for the Tokyo Olympics. Though he was ignored for the qualifiers, he didn’t give up. “I still have a lot of wrestling left in me. It (career) won’t end like this,” he had said, dismissively. Now one wonders, is this how his illustrious career ends?
Sources in Delhi Police say Sagar was confined and assaulted in the Chhatrasal basement. Hidden from the outside world, it’s a sprawling but dimly-lit space that’s big enough to house around 50 cars. But it has never been used as a parking facility. Instead, wrestling mats were laid in this wide corridor with bright pink walls. It has a makeshift gym, a tiny office and a praying area. It’s an uninviting place guarded by burly men with prying eyes, who stand next to the giant metal doors, ensuring the entry of only a select few.
Around here, he was deified. Adjacent to a Hanuman statue at the entrance of the wrestling hall are two giant pictures of Sushil. The young pehelwans followed a daily ritual: first seeking the Lord’s blessings and then, touching their idol’s feet.
In his prime, Sushil would put on a show every day for the 200-odd wrestlers, who would come from the remotest villages across Haryana, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and, in some cases, even Jammu. He climbed ropes, grappled in mud, trained on the mat, and showed the amount of effort that goes into becoming an Olympic medallist.
It was in this spartan setting with a guru-shishya tradition that young wrestlers aspired to add to Chhatrashal’s legacy. But after May 23, the day Sushil hid behind the yellow-white towel, will the country’s most-fabled wrestling school be maligned forever?
These tough, battle-hardened men, who are taught to practise celibacy and self-control, have often flirted with the law. In the decades he has spent policing the region, retired cop Ashok Chand says he has come across multiple instances where wrestlers ‘because of their physical prowess, are used by various segments of the society’.
“There are many active and former wrestlers who are recruited as musclemen by politicians, recovery agents by banks and money lenders, bouncers at clubs and pubs. There are some who join criminal gangs and gangsters and indulge in extortion and bullying businesses to pay protection money. They are also employed by toll plaza owners to man booths on borders to browbeat motorists,” Chand says.
This isn’t plain generalisation. There are far too many instances that attest Chand’s claim:
– A few years ago, a village sarpanch in Haryana was shot dead because of a tussle over land.
– Naveen Dalal, the man accused of firing two shots at activist Umar Khalid outside the Constitution Club in New Delhi, is a former wrestler from Mandothi, a village in Haryana.
– Rakesh Malik, another wrestler from Haryana, served a jail term for murder, and was involved in another assassination attempt after he was freed.
– Earlier this year, a wrestling coach killed five sportspersons in cold blood after he was accused of misbehaviour by a woman wrestler.
