Sakshi Malik’s upcoming autobiography reminds readers, especially male readers, that even the toughest women aren’t safe from sexual harassment and that the system is designed to protect those who harass rather than their victims.

Sakshi, whose book Witness has been published by Juggernaut Books, is India’s first woman wrestler to win an Olympic medal. She was part of the agitation against the alleged sexual harassment of women wrestlers by then Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president and BJP Lok Sabha member Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.

Much of the proceedings in court are not reportable given the law that protects the identity of victims of sexual harassment.

The autobiography, co-written by journalist Jonathan Selvaraj, gives a ringside view of the sordid saga from Sakshi’s perspective and offers the public a window to the rot that exists and despite which Sakshi and her peers excel.

The alleged harassment apart, it is the plain description of the Kafkaesque sports bureaucracy and the intrigue within the wrestling community that knocks the wind out of you.

Sakshi says it was wrestler and BJP member Babita Phogat who organised the protest against Singh last year, although she later distanced herself from it. Once the agitation began, with women wrestlers alleging harassment by Singh, the system came into play.

On January 19, 2023, the protesting wrestlers met then sports minister Anurag Thakur.

In her autobiography, accessed by The Telegraph, Sakshi writes: “Anurag Thakur sat there, listening quietly. There was no emotion on his face. If he was shocked by anything he heard, he didn’t show it. His reaction was in complete contrast to everyone else’s.

“As each of us told our stories, the atmosphere in the room became steadily more emotional. Some of the younger girls were already breaking down in tears. But Thakur could have been listening to someone talking about the weather. It was as if he was bored and just wanted our meeting to be over. He came across as a very harsh individual. I was unsure of just what we had achieved, if we had indeed achieved anything at all.

“Shortly after we had told our stories to Thakur and he had left the room, (wrestler) Bajrang (Punia) got a call. On the other end of the line was (Union home minister) Amit Shah. Bajrang said he was told that it was time to end the protest. Amit Shah told Bajrang to trust him and that he would make things right. Bajrang felt that since he had been clearly promised that things would be made right by Amit Shah himself, perhaps we ought to listen to him.

“Babita had come with us to Anurag Thakur’s house as someone who was supposedly acting as the interlocutor between us and the party. She told Bajrang that Amit Shah was just like her father. And that if he said something he wouldn’t backtrack from it. His word was all the guarantee we needed.

“Not all of us who had come to Anurag Thakur’s house believed this. If one group wanted to take Amit Shah at his word and end the protest, the other was adamant that we were not going to end the protest until Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh had actually stepped down as the president of the federation or until Amit Shah gave us his word in writing.”

Despite serious differences between the wrestlers on their future course of action, they agreed to end the agitation on an assurance from Thakur that Singh would step down as WFI president and that an oversight committee would take charge and probe their allegations.

“We had a press conference at close to 1 a.m., where Anurag Thakur paraded us in front of the media and said everything had been sorted out. He announced that an oversight committee would be formed, but he danced around the specifics of it.

“Even as he spoke, I knew we had been gamed,” Sakshi writes.

The panel, which included Olympic boxing medallist and former parliamentarian M.C. Mary Kom and Sports Authority of India official Radhica Sreeman — both nominated by Sakshi and other protesting wrestlers — let Singh off the hook.

“It wasn’t just Mary Kom whom I considered an idol and role model. I used to admire Yogeshwar Dutt (Olympian wrestling medallist and BJP member) too. It was such a big thing for me to go with him to the 2014 Commonwealth Games. I was so excited to be in the same team as an Olympic medallist. I was getting pictures clicked with him at Glasgow. But he didn’t support us at all….” Sakshi writes.

“So many of my idols turned out to be only too human. They were as selfish as anyone. I admired two of them for their Olympic medals, but what good were they? I used to think I was special for having one of my own too. But I know now that that medal isn’t anything special.”

She alleges that Singh’s lewd advances towards her began after her selection for the Junior Asian Championship in 2012 when she was 19. He constantly called her, her mother and her physiotherapist, she says.

“How do you fight back against someone like that? The best solution, according to my mother, was just to lay low. But try as she might, there was just no way for me to avoid him,” she writes.

After she struck gold at the championships that year in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Singh —who was present there — allegedly made a move that Sakshi says she had long dreaded.

“Once I was back in my room, he sent word through his physiotherapist Dhirendra Pratap Singh that I should come to his room so that I could call my parents on his mobile phone and speak to them…. I tried to pretend that I knew just how I was going to handle any possibility, but in truth I was terrified. Eventually though, the physio Dhirendra Pratap Singh came up to my room and accompanied me to Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s room before leaving….” Sakshi writes.

“….But right after I ended the call, he tried to molest me while I was seated on his bed. I pushed him off and started to cry. He stepped back after that. I think he realised very clearly that I wasn’t going to go along with what he wanted. He started saying that he had put his arms around me ‘papa jaise’, as a father would. But I knew that that was not what it was. I ran out of his room all the way back to mine, weeping all the way.”

Sakshi adds: “Everyone knew what had happened with me at Almaty. No one spoke out about it.

“Neither did I.”