The Mighty fall: Sushil Kumar’s arrest, Chhatrasal stadium homicide expose wrestling’s ugly underbelly

It began with a battle over property. It ended with a former junior nationwide champion, Sagar Dhankhar, getting overwhelmed to demise. And an ex-world champion, a two-time Olympic medallist, Sushil Kumar, getting arrested after being on the run for shut to 3 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 entrance of cameras. His pal and fellow wrestler Ajay Sherawat, sporting a black t-shirt with ‘Mercy for animals’ inscribed on it, was subsequent to him.
The two had been criss-crossing state borders evading cops since May 5, the day after the incident. Both are talked about within the FIR and have been accused of homicide, abduction and prison conspiracy.

#JUSTIN: Two-time Olympic medalist Sushil Kumar in police custody. @IndianSpecific, @ieDelhi pic.twitter.com/lhKCwNv0lW
— Mahender Singh Manral (@mahendermanral) May 23, 2021
It’s a dramatic fall from grace of an athlete who medalled at consecutive Olympics – an unprecedented feat in a rustic that had a grand whole of two particular person medals within the final century. As destiny would have it, the alleged venue for the lethal conflict that triggered this sequence of occasions was Sushil’s everlasting base for greater than twenty years and the nation’s most prolific wrestling meeting line – New Delhi’s Chhatrasal Stadium.
Until the evening of the incident, May 4, Sushil was stated to be making ready laborious at his well-known alma mater for that ultimate push to make the minimize for the Tokyo Olympics. Though he was ignored for the qualifiers, he didn’t surrender. “I still have a lot of wrestling left in me. It (career) won’t end like this,” he had stated, dismissively. Now one wonders, is that this how his illustrious profession ends?
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Sources in Delhi Police say Sagar was confined and assaulted within the Chhatrasal basement. Hidden from the surface world, it’s a sprawling however dimly-lit area that’s sufficiently big to deal with round 50 vehicles. But it has by no means been used as a parking facility. Instead, wrestling mats had been laid on this huge hall with vivid pink partitions. It has a makeshift fitness center, a tiny workplace and a praying space. It’s an uninviting place guarded by burly males with prying eyes, who stand subsequent to the large steel doorways, guaranteeing the entry of solely a choose few.
READ | ‘They could have thrown Sagar out of Chhatrasal… taking his life unacceptable’
Sushil had been coaching right here for years however since 2019, aside from a couple of weeks throughout final yr’s lockdown. He virtually lived in his dingy corridor, surrounded solely by his most trusted lieutenants, certainly one of them being Ajay, the pal who was on the run with him. His knees strapped and wrists taped, Sushil – who will flip 38 this Wednesday – was placing his physique via immense ache in a ultimate, determined try to make the Olympics staff.
He’d even flown down a coach six years youthful to him from Dagestan, the South Russian area that has embraced wrestling to maintain boys away from violence.
Escape from crime
Incidentally, a whole lot of youngsters who stroll previous the iron gates of the North-West Delhi stadium additionally took up wrestling because of this. “Growing up in these parts, you are never far from violence,” stated Pradeep, a wrestler who refers to himself solely by his first identify. “My parents feared I’d become a thug. So, they sent me to Chhatrasal to become like Sushil pehelwan.” In these elements, virtually everybody who wrestled needed to be like Sushil.
He was 14 when he joined the Chhatrasal Stadium’s akhara, which was began in 1988 by his former coach, now father-in-law, Satpal Singh. The two Olympic medals, bronze at Beijing 2008 and silver on the London Games, and a world championship title in 2010 catapulted Sushil to a standing that only a few Indian sportspersons get pleasure from.
Sushil Kumar received silver medal on the 2012 London Olympics. (File picture)
Around right here, he was deified. Adjacent to a Hanuman statue on the entrance of the wrestling corridor are two big photos of Sushil. The younger pehelwans adopted a every day ritual: first in search of the Lord’s blessings after which, touching their idol’s ft.
In his prime, Sushil would placed on a present day-after-day for the 200-odd wrestlers, who would come from the remotest villages throughout Haryana, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and, in some circumstances, even Jammu. He climbed ropes, grappled in mud, skilled on the mat, and confirmed the quantity of effort that goes into changing into an Olympic medallist.
It was on this spartan setting with a guru-shishya custom that younger wrestlers aspired so as to add to Chhatrashal’s legacy. But after May 23, the day Sushil hid behind the yellow-white towel, will the nation’s most-fabled wrestling faculty be maligned eternally?
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These robust, battle-hardened males, who’re taught to practise celibacy and self-control, have typically flirted with the legislation. In the many years he has spent policing the area, retired cop Ashok Chand says he has come throughout a number of situations the place 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 situations that attest Chand’s declare:
– Just a few years in the past, a village sarpanch in Haryana was shot useless due to a tussle over land.– Naveen Dalal, the person accused of firing two pictures at activist Umar Khalid outdoors the Constitution Club in New Delhi, is a former wrestler from Mandothi, a village in Haryana.– Rakesh Malik, one other wrestler from Haryana, served a jail time period for homicide, and was concerned in one other assassination try after he was freed.– Earlier this yr, a wrestling coach killed 5 sportspersons in chilly blood after he was accused of misbehaviour by a girl wrestler.
Double-edged sword
Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) assistant secretary Vinod Tomar stated Sushil’s actions had introduced disrepute to the game, which gained in reputation after the nation received medals in it on the final three Olympics.
But the WFI itself is headed by Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, a BJP Member of Parliament from Kaiserganj, Uttar Pradesh. As per his 2014 election affidavit, he has been charged in quite a few prison circumstances, together with try to homicide and dacoity. Calls to Singh in search of remark went unanswered.
READ | 6-time BJP MP from UP is strongman for India’s wrestlers too
Parents of younger wrestlers realise the game is a double-edged sword: there’s the lure that the game might carry them fortune and fame however there are underlying fears, too, that their youngster might very simply go astray.
For this cause, the daddy of Tokyo Olympics-bound wrestler Deepak Punia travelled 50km one-way, from his village Chhara to Chhatrasal, day-after-day. Subhash Punia undertook these lengthy journeys to ship home made meals to his son. He did it additionally to ensure he didn’t go off-track.
Punia Sr. had earlier advised this newspaper: “I quit everything I was doing and concentrated on giving him the best quality food and whatever else he needed. It helped his wrestling, of course, but that was also one way to ensure he did not go off the rails. The technical bits were taken care of by Virender coach (in Chhara) and Mahabali Satpal (at Chhatrasal).”
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If Sushil was the face of Chhatrasal, Satpal was the mind behind it. The former Asian Games gold medallist wrestler and a Dronacharya Awardee has arrange a well-oiled scouting system through the years, which now runs on autopilot. He has informally tied up with a whole lot of akharas throughout Haryana, which act as feeder golf equipment to Chhatrasal. Once there, the trainees stay in rooms subsequent to the wrestling corridor and below the stadium’s stand, and all their fundamental wants are taken care of.
The military of coaches that labored below Satpal turned Chhatrasal right into a conveyor belt of expertise, which produced nationwide and worldwide champions. London Olympics bronze medallist Yogeshwar Dutt, Tokyo Olympics hopefuls Bajrang Punia, Ravi Dahiya and Deepak are all Chhatrasal alumni.
The Chhatrasal stadium is ‘more than just a wrestling hub’. (File Photo)
Sushil, the most important identify of all of them, took up an administrative position on the stadium in his twilight years however didn’t cease coaching. “There is a lot of discipline and hard work. But most of all, there is fairness. This is why Chhatrasal is one of the best academies in India. Some wrestlers may feel insecure at a national camp but they feel safe at Chhatrasal,” says a wrestling coach from Maharashtra.
Reputation tarnished
There could have been the odd case of indiscipline however nothing as extreme because the incident this month, which has prompted numerous questions and theories about what goes on contained in the stadium.
“It isn’t only a wrestling hub,” says veteran crime reporter Inder Vashisth. “In the mid-90s, Delhi Police was on the lookout for a mafia in extortion cases. It turned out he was handing over prizes at Chhatrasal Stadium along with Satpal. A lot of criminals from the outer Delhi region have sought refuge inside the stadium. Satpal and Sushil, apart from being sportspersons, are also government officials. So, their role should be investigated.”
Ravinder, a Chhatrasal trainee who claims he was with Sagar on the fateful evening, says he’ll discontinue coaching there. “I won’t be training at Chhatrasal anymore. I will cut all links with Chhatrasal. An akhara is like a spiritual place for a wrestler. With Sagar’s death, Chhatrasal is not the same hallowed place for me. There are other wrestlers who will leave too,” Ravinder says.
Says one other Chhatrasal wrestler who’s disillusioned by the current occasions: “We have to make so many sacrifices to become the best wrestler at Chhatrasal. The competition is fierce. The rigour of training, the discipline, the dedication needed is unimaginable for someone who is not part of the akhara. But you always thought that it was something pure and essential to keep the wrestling culture alive. But after this incident, one wonders what kind of culture is being promoted at the akhara.”
Chand, the retired police officer, refrains from singling out Chhatrasal. But he concedes that akharas are ‘responsible for turning pehelwans into criminals.’ “This is more or less true of the whole of Northern India. Pehelwans who control akharas become powerful as they are courted by politicians and criminal and unscrupulous elements of society as they have, under their tutelage, young wrestlers who can be used for achieving their objectives,” Chand says. “But I wouldn’t like to specifically say anything about Chhatrasal or Sushil.”
But after the clip launched by Delhi Police – displaying Sushil hiding behind a towel – went viral, wrestling’s thus far unseen ugly underbelly acquired uncovered and the whispers concerning the akhara’s shady tradition acquired amplified.
With inputs from Nihal Koshie