India’s hockey captain Rani Rampal slammed the casteist abuse against Vandana Katariya’s family, saying it’s high time discrimination on basis of religion and community was stopped.

Calling the abuse shameful, the captain took a stand against the slurs faced by a member of the team.

The Indian women’s team achieved their best ever Olympic performance at the Tokyo Games when they reached the semi-finals and narrowly missed out on the bronze medal. But after the loss in the semi-final the family of Vandana Katariya, who belongs to the Dalit community that has faced generations of discrimination, were faced with casteist abuse.

Katariya scored the first Olympic hat-trick by an Indian woman in a 4-3 victory over South Africa in the league stage.

Police said that a couple of men taunted the family at their Uttarakhand state home saying the Dalits in the team were to blame for the defeat. The family has said that threats were made too.

“We put our all our hard work to play for India, struggle and sacrifice so much to represent our country and when we see what is happening – what happened to Vandana’s family – I want to say to people please stop this discrimination, religious division and casteism,” Rampal told reporters in a virtual press conference.

The 26-year-old Rampal was emphatic in her response when asked to comment on the matter. “We have to rise above this. We come from different religions – Hindu, Muslim, Sikh – and come from all parts of India – north, south and east – but here we work for India.”

“We sweat it out for the Indian flag and it is such a shameful thing when we see that people behave like this,” she added.

The captain added that at the same time, the team had received overwhelming love from Indians despite not winning a first medal, which showed that there were many good people in India.

But she emphasised that lessons had to be learned to end such abuse to make India a sporting nation.

“This should never happen to any athlete, or a normal person.”