Women hockey players thank ‘whistleblower’

NEW DELHI: Sometime last week – “after repeatedly hitting a bottleneck as they tried to get their voice heard by the sports ministry” – members of the Indian women’s hockey team made up their mind not to further pursue sexual harassment charges against coach Maharaj Kishan Kaushik. They had instead decided to “reconcile themselves to the situation” and “concentrate on the game.” That is till a “good samaritan” decided to send an anonymous tell-all letter along with unseemly pictures of team videographer Basavaraja to the ministry.

An anonymous letter was also sent on June 11th to the ministry detailing the misdeeds of Kaushik and Basavaraja but no action was taken. A member of the ministry, who had received the mail, had asked the sender to reveal his/her identity – which the sender refused to, fearing dire consequences. Therefore, the matter was buried again. “I’m grateful to whoever sent the letter (no one knows till date who wrote to the ministry) on my behalf. I wouldn’t have been able to write it myself of the torture that I went through since March this year,” India player Ranjita, whose name was mentioned in the anonymous letter as one of the affected players, told TOI.

For the record, Ranjita was asked to write down the letter (a copy of which is with TOI) after she was probed for an hour in front of the four-member enquiry committee on Wednesday. “My father had asked met to quit playing when I told him about the harassment by the coach. But my mother told me that ‘you have worked so hard to get to the international level. Give it some more time. But if things get worse, pull out’. That’s what I did. I persevered but I was reaching the breaking point,” stated Ranjita.

Another player, Rosalind Ralte said, “We had seen how Kaushik conducted himself in the last few years, during the camps and tours. His brazen affair with the then team manager Anurita Saini and how he went ahead despite us catching him in compromising position. How he was so insensitive and fearless about being caught. So when Ranjita came to us crying in the month of March that Kaushik was sexually harassing her, there was no reason to disbelieve her.”

Sunita Lakra, another India player, added her bit by saying, “Ranjita would often break down but we couldn’t do much about it except to tell her to keep concentrating on the game and avoid Kaushik at all cost which was a difficult thing to do since he was the coach. We knew Kaushik was powerful. We knew how he went scot free when Helen Mary had complained against him and Saini. We knew we didn’t have evidence against Kaushik except for us eye-witnesses so when someone posted the letter and the pics, we were more than happy.”

On Thursday, the players sent a letter to the ministry, signed by as many as 31 of them, with a declaration that “We believe and support Ranjita and all the charges that she has levelled against Kaushik. We understand how hurt she is by all this. We don’t want anyone else to go through what she has gone through in future.”

Attempts to reach Kaushik were not successful.