New Delhi: A Delhi Court has sought responses from ex-BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh and his aide Vinod Tomar on an appeal filed by four women wrestlers against the duo’s acquittal last month in a sexual harassment case filed by some of the country’s top grapplers.
On 3 August, Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) Ashwani Panwar acquitted Singh and Tomar in the case, stating that the prosecution had “miserably failed” to prove the sexual harassment allegations beyond reasonable doubt.
Hearing the appeal filed on 25 September by the four wrestlers against the acquittal, Rouse Avenue Court Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh on Monday issued notices to former Wrestling Federation of India chief Singh and ex-WFI assistant secretary Tomar, and posted the matter for further hearing on 9 October.
The case, which had sparked nationwide protests by top Indian wrestlers in 2023, involved allegations from six female wrestlers who made a range of accusations against Singh including groping, inappropriate touching, forced physical contact and, in one instance, demanding sexual favours in exchange for medical assistance.
In the 3 August judgement, the court had said the evidence was riddled with what it described as “material contradictions”, “factual impossibilities” and signs of a “politically motivated” conspiracy.
In their challenge against the 3 August acquittal, the wrestlers allege that a major portion of the magisterial court’s judgment 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 victims’ circumstances.
Read as a whole, the wrestlers state, the judgment expressly and repeatedly applies “a standard of expected victim behaviour that has no basis in law”.
According to their petition, in the judgement delivered by the ACJM it is expected 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; that she would retaliate, or provoke retaliation by those around her, in the moment.
The ACJM court also expected that she would sever all further cordial or professional contact with her harasser, irrespective of his continuing control over her livelihood; that she would report every incident to every confidante at the same time and in the same breath; and that anything short of this constitutes a “material” and “fatal” contradiction, their petition notes.
The petitioners are represented by advocates Bhavook Chauhan, Harsh Bora, Chinmay Kanojia, Praavita Kashyap, Pravir Singh and Anushka Baruah.
Reasons for challenging his acquittal
The women athletes allege that the reasoning put forth by the ACJM, taken incident by incident and then as a whole, “discloses a pattern of selective reading of the evidence in a manner favourable” to Singh and Tomar, and contrary to the law.
Their petition notes that the court’s own analysis “is internally contradictory to its own opinion”.
On one side, argues the petition, the court notes that the statement of protected witness 5 “does not strictly/technically fulfil the requirements prescribed by law” for an affidavit. In other words, it was neither a sworn nor an attested document.
However, the court then proceeded to treat an omission and a factual error in the same document as a “material contradiction” fatal to Singh’s entire testimony on the first and formative incident of her ordeal.
Thus, the trial Court, the petitioner say, “has erred in treating the affidavit as a ‘previous statement’ of the witness as if it were a lawfully executed affidavit, or a previous statement given to the police”, which it was not.
The petitioners allege that the trial court made a “wholly incorrect and ignorant” finding that neither of two protected witnesses had deposed to appellant no. 1 about there being an attempt to push away Tomar.
When the complainant has testified about an incident of forcible physical contact and other witnesses have corroborated her account, the fact that an appellant did not push Singh away is not, by itself, a reason to disbelieve her, especially “because he (Singh) was the President of the WFI and had the power to impact a wrestlers’ career prospects for publicly rebuffing their advances”, the petitioners say.
Additionally, in a crowded, public setting, any woman would be hesitant in making a public display of her discomfort, their petition notes.
The trial court has “shown its lack of basic understanding of how sexual harassment at the workplace operates where several women choose to remain silent despite being victims merely to protect their job/service/employment”, the women wrestlers have written in the petition.
In questioning a complainant’s conduct post the incident, the court “conveniently chooses to ignore” her submission that she was the sole bread-earner of the family after her father’s death and her mother’s cancer, who also had the responsibility of taking care of her younger siblings.
Thus, “when a victim of sexual harassment and assault has deposed that she was compelled by circumstances to weigh her livelihood against her self-respect, it is not for the Ld. Trial Court to give its own personal, subjective opinion as to what choice she ought to have made”, the petition notes.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
Also read: Brij Bhushan acquittal rested on 2 hostile complainants & victims’ ‘cordial relations’ with him