At the Paris Olympics 2024 , the disqualification of wrestler Vinesh Phogat from the finals due to being 100 gm overweight, left every Indian with a broken heart. Actor Nakuul Mehta was also one of them and in honour of Vinesh he recited a beautiful poem that he posted on Instagram. Mention Vinesh to him and he relates how the recent tragedy in Kolkata where a medical trainee was raped and murdered at a hospital is like a causal effect of what Vinesh fought for earlier.
Mehta says, “All of us are aware of the fight Vinesh had to put through and the circumstances she went through in the last year. With what’s going on in the country right now, with the incident in Kolkata, we have suddenly woken up and are protesting and dissenting. But honestly, this should have started when our wrestlers were out fighting the authorities on sexual misconduct.
We didn’t stand up for that, we only wake up when it’s too late, and it has happened today as well,” he says, referring to the wrestlers’ protests in 2023 for investigation into allegations of sexual harassment of female wrestlers by MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh during his tenure as the president of the Wrestling Federation of India. Nakuul is in awe of Phogat’s achievement irrespective of her result in Paris. “Her achievement in the Olympics is nothing short of spectacular.
For her to beat the Japanese wrestler, who had never been beaten before ever, was just amazing. In the final too, she was to face the Australian wre.