Why India’s star wrestler was disqualified at the Olympics

India’s star Olympic wrestler Vinesh Phogat is out of the competition ahead of a gold medal match, after being disqualified for being over her class’s weight limit. It’s a devastating end to the Paris games for the wrestler who has led the charge against sexual harassment at the highest levels of her sport.

Had she been able to compete and won Wednesday’s match, she would have been the first Indian woman to win a gold medal in any Olympic event.

Phogat, who often wrestles at a 53-kilogram weight — or about 116 pounds — made the 50-kilogram (about 110 pounds) berth after another wrestler won the 53-kilogram spot on India’s wrestling team. She knew that getting down to competition weight would be difficult, she said in an April interview: “I gain weight easily. It doesn’t matter how fit I am, I still gain weight because I have a lot of muscle mass.”

She had been able to maintain the lower weight until Wednesday, when she weighed in at just 100 grams over the weight limit — despite the drastic measures she had taken over the past week to maintain her 50-kilogram weight. Phogat barely ate, spent hours in a sauna and exercised, and even tried cutting her hair to make weight, according to Team India’s chief medical officer.

But that 100 grams — around 3.5 ounces — meant she couldn’t compete in Wednesday’s match, and wouldn’t receive a medal at all despite her dominance. She put up a phenomenal performance in Paris, beating out Japanese Olympic gold medalist Yui Susaki in the first round, and dominating thereafter, seemingly guaranteeing India either a gold or silver medal.

Her wins — and sudden disqualification — have put her recent crusade against sexual harassment in India’s national wrestling organization back in the spotlight. And though her Olympics are over, there’s now global attention on her activism as much as her athletic prowess.

Phogat spent months last year as the face of a campaign to remove Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh as head of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), the body governing the sport in India.

Phogat and other women wrestlers accused Singh of sexual exploitation, and Phogat in particular alleged that he emotionally and psychologically tormented her following the Tokyo Summer Games, where she just missed out on a medal. After filing a complaint with the Indian Olympic Association, and receiving little response, they mounted a May 2023 protest in New Delhi — where they were reportedly assaulted by police.

Sexual harassment is a problem everywhere, and India is no different. A 2024 Centre for Economic Data & Analysis study found workplace sexual harassment to be on the rise in India (though reporting mechanisms have increased, too), and a 2022 World Bank report found harassment on public transportation to be a nearly universal experience in big cities, with 88 percent of those surveyed in New Delhi saying they’d experienced it.

Scholars Anil Kumar and Ashutosh Pandey, both professors in the department of sociology at Bayalasi P.G. College, in Jalalpur, India, wrote in a recent study that the “prevalent perception of sexual harassment often portrays it as a joke, where women are deemed both responsible for and deserving of such behavior.”

Despite the efforts of Indian feminists, particularly from the 1970s onward, there are still high-profile cases of harassment and violence against women, as well as protests against the police and governments’ handling of the problem.

In the case of Phogat and her colleagues, New Delhi police did finally arrest Singh in June of this year on charges of “sexual harassment, intimidation and outraging the modesty of women,” according to The Hindu. He has maintained his innocence.

That Singh was removed from his post as the head of the WFI and held to account for his alleged crimes is a testament to the women’s protests; in addition to his high profile in the athletic world, Singh was also a powerful member of Parliament with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Phogat’s Olympics are at an end, but more and more Indian women are taking up sports — and excelling. And her activism is part of a wider effort in India to help women athletes speak up about sexual harassment and assault. There’s a lot more to be done in that arena: As sports fans have seen in Spain, the US, and elsewhere, the serious consequences of sexual harassment aren’t unique to India.