# The Wrestlers Will Appeal. The Question Their Case Never Got to Ask Is Why a Criminal Court Was the Only Room Available > A Delhi court has acquitted Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh and his aide. Vinesh Phogat says the women wrestlers have instructed their lawyers to appeal. Three years on, the route they were left with was always the hardest one. - Source: India Max - Canonical URL: https://indiamax.net/article/brij-bhushan-acquittal-wrestlers-appeal - Author: Vikram Shetty - Section: Politics - Published: 2026-08-03T12:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-03T12:00:00.000Z - Tags: Wrestling, Vinesh Phogat, Courts, Sports Governance --- A Delhi court on Monday acquitted the former Member of Parliament Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh and his aide Vinod Tomar in the sexual harassment case brought by women wrestlers. Vinesh Phogat said afterwards that the complainants have instructed their lawyers to appeal and will do so as soon as possible, adding that they have not lost hope and that the wrestlers will continue their fight. In her statement she described what it had cost to begin. It took a great deal of courage, she said, to take to the streets and file a police complaint against a powerful leader of the ruling party. She alleged that Singh used his position to pressure several young women into withdrawing their names, that others stayed and fought the case in court, and that the wrestlers are deeply saddened the court did not find him guilty. She also alleged that the government and the wider system had worked from the beginning to protect him. Those are her allegations and they should be read as that. So should the verdict be read for what it is. An acquittal in a criminal trial means the prosecution did not establish the charge beyond reasonable doubt. It is a finding about the strength of the evidence presented, not a judicial declaration that the complainants invented what they described, and the two are constantly confused in the retelling. Singh has been acquitted and is entitled to the presumption that goes with it. The wrestlers are entitled to appeal, and have said they will. What deserves more attention than it will get is the shape of the route these athletes had to take. The complaint concerned conduct alleged between 2016 and 2019, at the wrestling federation's office, at Singh's official residence and on trips abroad. In other words, it described a workplace, or the closest thing an Indian athlete has to one. The federation controlled selection, training camps, accreditation and travel. For a competitor, falling out with it does not mean finding another employer. It means the end of the career. That is precisely the situation Indian law on workplace harassment was written for, and it operates on a different footing from a criminal court. An internal complaints mechanism decides on the balance of probabilities rather than beyond reasonable doubt, is meant to sit inside the institution where the conduct is alleged, and can lead to removal from a post without anyone going to prison. It is designed for exactly this asymmetry, where the person complained against controls the complainant's livelihood. When it works, a criminal trial is not the first resort. When it does not exist, or is staffed by people who answer to the person named, the only door left is a police station and, failing that, a pavement. The wrestlers went to the pavement. Sakshi Malik, Vinesh Phogat, Bajrang Punia and Sangeeta Phogat protested for months in Delhi in 2023, seeking Singh's arrest over allegations that included one made on behalf of a minor. Whatever a court has now concluded about the evidence, the fact that Olympic medallists concluded a street protest was their most promising option is a verdict on the governing structure, and that verdict has not been appealed by anyone. The appeal will now proceed on the record, which is where it belongs. The other question stays open and is not addressed by any judgment either way: whether an athlete in an Indian federation today has a complaints process she can use without ending her career to use it. If she does not, the next case will follow the same path as this one, and it will take the same three years to arrive at a courtroom that was never the right room to begin with. --- Originally published by India Max. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://indiamax.net/article/brij-bhushan-acquittal-wrestlers-appeal.