NEW DELHI: The country's top wrestlers, enraged by the treatment meted out to them during Sunday's protest, have decided to immerse their hard-earned medals in river Ganga at 6 pm on Tuesday and then sit on an indefinite hunger strike at India Gate.
On Sunday when a new Parliament building was being inaugurated, just less than 2 Km away, the wrestlers had to face a hard time with the Delhi Police as their plan to hold a sit-in protest outside Parliament was flogged into the ground.
All the wrestlers were forcibly detained by the police and were also removed from their protest site at the Jantar Mantar area in the national capital. Later, an FIR against them was filed for violation of law and order.
Today, all the top wrestlers, including Sakshi Malik, Bajrang Punia and Vinesh Phogat, put out a statement on their respective social media accounts, saying they would go to Haridwar and immerse their medals in the river.
"These medals are our lives, our souls. There will be no reason to live after throwing them in the Ganga today," it read further.
"It came to our mind how to return the medals to our President, who is herself a woman. Our conscience said NO, because she is sitting just 2 Km away from us and didn't utter a single word," the statement read.
The wrestlers said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi who used to call them the daughters of this homeland, did not even once show his concern for them. "Rather, he invited the oppressor to the inauguration of the new Parliament building who even posed for photographs in bright white clothes. That brightness is piercing us like it wants to convey that he is the system," it read.
The wrestlers, including Olympic medallists Bajrang Punia, Sakshi Malik, and double World Championships medallist Vinesh Phogat have been protesting at the Jantar Mantar since April 23 demanding the arrest of Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh over the allegations of sexual harassment leveled by 7 women wrestlers, including one minor girl.