New Delhi, Sep 28 A Delhi court on Monday sought a response from former WFI chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh on an appeal filed by four women wrestlers against a magistrate's verdict acquitting him in a sexual harassment case.
Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh also issued notice to former Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) assistant secretary Vinod Tomar, who had been acquitted of criminal intimidation charge in the case. The court also sought a response from Delhi Police.
“Issue notice to the respondents for the next date of hearing,” the judge said.
The respondents are Singh, Tomar and the station house officer (SHO) of Connaught Place police station.
Noting that the counsel for Delhi Police accepted the notice, the judge said a notice be served to Singh and Tomar through speed post and other means.
The matter has been posted for further proceedings on October 9.
The court allowed and disposed of an application by the wrestlers seeking concealment of their identities and permitting the appellants (four wrestlers) to serve redacted copies of the present appeal on the respondents.
On August 3 this year, the magisterial court acquitted Singh, a former BJP MP, in the sexual harassment case filed by six women wrestlers including world championships medallist Vinesh Phogat, citing lack of evidence. The court also acquitted Tomar.
According to wrestlers' plea filed on Friday, the acquittal was unsustainable in law, was founded on a "manifestly erroneous and selective appreciation" of the evidence on record, proceeded on conjectures and surmises, and "failed to apply binding and well-settled principles of law".
The plea claimed 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.
It argued that the verdict had throughout applied the standard of the ideal victim, and when read as a whole, it expressly and repeatedly applied a standard of expected victim behaviour that had no basis in law.
These standards, the appeal said, included assumptions 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.
It was assumed that the ideal victim, the appeal said, would fight back or provoke a reaction right when the incident happened, besides cutting off all future professional contact with her harasser, even though he still controlled her livelihood.
It said that the standards also assumed that she would tell every confidante the full story at once in identical terms, and anything less than these was counted as a serious, fatal inconsistency.
The appeal underlined that such assumptions do not reflect how real victims actually behave.
It said that the testimonies of the two (hostile) witnesses, who resiled from their statements, did not affect the independently corroborated case of the four women wrestlers or appellants.
The plea also alleged that the evidence on record established that Singh, a six-time member of Parliament and three-time president of WFI, exercised extensive control over the appellants' career, directly and through Tomar and the coaching staff.
Earlier, the magisterial court's order had noted that two of the five complainant wrestlers stated that they were "forced/pressured" to level allegations of sexual harassment against Singh.
It had said that it appeared from their testimonies that the allegation was "politically motivated, false and fabricated, made collectively" in deep conspiracy.
The court also questioned how the complainants mentioned the "wrong country and year" of the alleged first such incident, saying "the contradiction is fatal to the prosecution case" as "it is not difficult but rather abnormal conduct to not remember the place where the incident of sexual harassment had occurred".
As the complainant wrestlers feared their careers could be impacted, they said they did not make any allegations against the accused in a timely manner, but "it is not understandable" as to how they maintained "cordial relations" with Singh for years and "he was invited to family functions and wedding ceremonies by the victims", the 239-page judgement had said.
The magisterial court had acquitted Singh of "all charges" under IPC sections 354 (assault or criminal force to a woman to outrage her modesty), 354A (sexual harassment) and 506 (I) (criminal intimidation) and Tomar under Section 506 (Part I) of the IPC.
