Two-time Olympic gold-medallist Sushil Kumar could miss the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games (CWG) for his alleged involvement in a brawl with Parveen Rana during the CWG trials last month.
The Delhi Police had registered an FIR against Sushil on charges of attacking Praveen and his brother Naveen. According to a report in The Times of India, if it files a chargesheet on Sushil, the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) would withdraw his selection for April’s CWG.
Sushil, The Times of India reported, had replied to WFI that he’d never “intentionally or unintentionally” bring disrepute to wrestling.
“Wrestling is my life and I am always committed to the sport of wrestling. I had no intention to demean wrestling or any of the wrestler and I will never ever do it. I myself didn’t want to disrupt the discipline of the federation and I’ll always follow it in the future. I want to assure that neither I nor any of my supporters were involved in this whole incident. I condemn the entire episode,” Sushil wrote in his letter to WFI, as per the report.
Earlier, Parveen accused Sushil of “personally instigating” his supporters to manhandle him.
“As soon as the bout ended Sushil Kumar told his supporters ‘yeh raha isko dekhle’ (here he is show him) and then walked into a room. He personally instigated them,” Rana had said.
He also claimed that he was threatened before the Nationals, and the walkover he gave to Sushil was because of an injury.
Sushil, at the KD Jadhav Stadium in Delhi, had beaten Rana 7-3 in the semi-final and then Jitender Kumar 4-3 in the final to qualify for the CWG.