Four women wrestlers challenge Brij Bhushan’s acquittal in sexual harassment case

File | On August 3, the magisterial court acquitted former BJP MP and ex-chief of WFI in the case filed by six women wrestlers, including World Championships medallist Vinesh Phogat, on grounds of lack of evidence. | Photo Credit: EMMANUAL YOGINI

Four women wrestlers on Friday filed an appeal against a magistrate’s order acquitting former Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh in a sexual harassment case.

The criminal appeal filed before the principal district and sessions judge of the Rouse Avenue court also assails the acquittal of former WFI assistant secretary Vinod Tomar of the charge of criminal intimidation in the case.

The matter is likely to be heard by Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh on Saturday.

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On August 3, the magisterial court acquitted former BJP MP and ex-chief of WFI in the case filed by six women wrestlers, including World Championships medallist Vinesh Phogat, on grounds of lack of evidence. Besides Singh, the court also acquitted Tomar in the case.

According to the plea filed on Friday, the verdict of acquittal was unsustainable in law, founded on a “manifestly erroneous and selective appreciation” of the evidence on record, proceeded on conjectures and surmises, and failed to apply binding and well-settled principles of law.

The plea claimed that a major portion of the magisterial court’s judgement rested its reasoning on archaic and stereotypical assumptions about the expected behaviour of victims of sexual assault and harassment, instead of a fair and evidence-based assessment after taking into account the circumstances of the victims.

It argued that the verdict had throughout applied the standard of the ideal victim, and when read as a whole, it expressly and repeatedly applied a standard of expected victim behaviour that had no basis in law.

These standards, the appeal said, included assumptions such as that a genuine victim would remember the exact place and year of an assault with photographic precision even while forgetting the precise dates of tournaments played years apart.

It was assumed that the ideal victim, the appeal said, would fight back or provoke a reaction right when the incident happened, besides cutting off all future professional contact with her harasser, even though he still controlled her livelihood.

It said that the standards also assumed that she would tell every confidante the full story at once in identical terms, and anything less than these, counted as a serious, fatal inconsistency.

File | Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh seen celebrating after showing he was acquitted by the Rouse Avenue Court in the sexual harassment case filed by women wrestlers, at his residence in New Delhi. | Photo Credit: SHIV KUMAR PUSHPAKAR

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The appeal underlined that such assumptions do not reflect how real victims actually behave. It alleged that the findings relied on certain unverified defence materials instead of the complainants’ detailed and corroborated record.

According to the plea, the magistrate’s verdict merely drew an adverse inference against one of the complainants and never dealt with the substance of her testimony to support the prosecution’s case.

It said that the testimonies of the two (hostile) witnesses, who resiled from their statements, did not affect the independently corroborated case of the four women wrestlers or appellants.

It alleged that the evidence on record established that Singh, a six-time member of Parliament and three-time president of WFI, exercised extensive control over the appellants’ careers, directly and through Tomar and the coaching staff.

The plea argued that the magisterial court’s verdict had erroneously dealt with the aspect of power and control exercised by Singh, and the delay in complaints.

Earlier, the magisterial court’s order had noted that two of the five complainant wrestlers stated that they were “forced/pressured” to level allegations of sexual harassment against Singh.

It had said that it appeared from their testimonies that the allegation was politically motivated, “false and fabricated, made collectively” in deep conspiracy.

The court also questioned how the complainants mentioned the “wrong country and year” of the alleged first such incident, saying “the contradiction is fatal to the prosecution case” as “it is not difficult but rather abnormal conduct to not remember the place where the incident of sexual harassment had occurred”.

As the complainant wrestlers feared their careers could be impacted, they said they did not make any allegations against the accused in a timely manner, but “it is not understandable” as to how they maintained “cordial relations” with Singh for years and “he was invited to family functions and wedding ceremonies by the victims”, said the 239-page judgement.

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The magisterial court had acquitted Singh of “all charges” under IPC sections 354 (assault or criminal force to a woman to outrage her modesty), 354A (sexual harassment) and 506 (I) (criminal intimidation) and Tomar under Section 506 (Part I) of the IPC.

The verdict had underlined that nothing has been proved by the prosecution, showing that these alleged two victims did not support the prosecution’s case due to any overt act attributable to the accused.

It had said that the two wrestlers who were projected as victims right from the inception appeared before the court and were eventually counselled, following which they categorically admitted that no sexual harassment acts were committed against them.