It is a day of relative peace after a night of chaos. At around 10 a.m. on May 4 in New Delhi, Vinesh Phogat, the first Indian woman wrestler to win gold in both the Commonwealth and Asian Games, sits cross-legged on a chequered mattress in Jantar Mantar, the official protest site in the capital. She is teary-eyed and exhausted. Sitting beside her are Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia, both Olympic medallists. Mediapersons mill around the 200-metre mattress-filled stretch, which has been heavily barricaded by the Delhi Police.
It was allegedly because of the mattresses that an altercation unfolded the previous night between the police and the protesters. The capital has seen some unusually heavy rains in May. The protesters have said they are forced to sleep on damp mattresses. On May 3, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Somnath Bharti decided to “make it a little easier for them” by providing foldable cots. The police stopped him saying permission had not been sought for the cots. The police alleged that when they intervened, the supporters tried to forcibly remove the cots from the truck, which led to a scuffle that left five officers injured. Punia claimed that the police manhandled and abused the wrestlers.
But this conflict over cots is a minor battle in a larger war that the wrestlers have been fighting for days. They have been sitting in protest — for the second time round — since late April against Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who has been accused of sexual harassment. “Our safety is at stake,” says Phogat. “We want Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to acknowledge our concerns, which are grave.”
