Four women wrestlers have filed an appeal in a Delhi court against the acquittal of former Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh in a sexual harassment case. The appeal also challenges the acquittal of co-accused Vinod Tomar. The matter goes before Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh at the Rouse Avenue Courts, and it marks a fresh turn in a case that has run for more than three years, ever since a group of India’s biggest wrestling stars first spoke up in 2023.
The wrestlers argue that the trial court order acquitting Singh, passed on August 3, is built on a selective and one-sided reading of the evidence. According to the appeal, the order leans on old-fashioned ideas about how a harassment victim is “supposed” to act, rather than looking fairly at the full picture of what the women went through. To understand why this order has drawn such strong pushback, it helps to first know who Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh is and how he rose to become one of Uttar Pradesh’s most powerful political figures.
Who Is Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh
Born on 8 January 1957, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh has spent close to four decades in Indian politics, winning a Lok Sabha seat six times. Five of those wins came on a BJP ticket and one on a Samajwadi Party ticket in 2009, with Singh representing seats such as Gonda, Kaiserganj and Balrampur in eastern Uttar Pradesh over the years. Before politics, he was a wrestler himself, and that early connection to the sport is part of why he later took charge of the Wrestling Federation of India, a role that would eventually put him at the centre of the very case now before the Delhi court.
Long before the wrestling federation controversy, Singh had already built a reputation as a bold and controversial leader. He was named among those involved in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, an episode from the Ram Mandir movement that shaped his early image as a strong Hindutva voice. A few years later, he spent time in jail under a strict anti-terror law over allegations of sheltering people linked to an underworld case, though the charges did not hold up once the main witness failed to testify. That period of his life, ironically, is also connected to his wife’s own entry into politics, since she went on to contest and win a Lok Sabha seat while he was in jail.
Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s Family and Political Legacy
Politics runs deep in Singh’s family, going back to his grandfather Chandrabhan Singh, who was an MLA in the 1950s. That legacy continues today through his wife and sons, all of whom hold or have held political office in the same Gonda-Balrampur belt that Singh has dominated for years.
His wife, Ketki Devi Singh, is a politician and social worker who was elected to Parliament in 1996, at the very time Singh could not contest due to the terror case against him. Together, the couple have won the Kaiserganj and Gonda seats a combined six times since 1991, making them one of the most electorally successful political families in that part of Uttar Pradesh.
That family influence has since passed to the next generation. Singh has four children, and two of his sons are now active in public life. Prateek Bhushan Singh has been the BJP MLA from Gonda since 2017, while Karan Bhushan Singh succeeded his father as BJP MP from Kaiserganj and also took over as WFI vice president, having earlier been elected president of the UP Wrestling Association. The family’s story has not been without personal tragedy, though. Singh’s eldest son, Shakti Sharan Singh, died in 2014 at the age of 23, a loss that remains part of the family’s history even as the rest of the family has continued to grow its political footprint. Singh’s parents, Jagdamba Sharan Singh and Pyari Devi, came from the same Gonda region where the family’s political roots first took hold.
What Exactly Is Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh Accused Of
This same political strength is what made the 2023 allegations against Singh so significant, since they were levelled at a sitting MP with decades of influence behind him. The complaints came from women wrestlers who accused Singh of sexually harassing them between 2016 and 2019, with the incidents said to have taken place at the WFI office, at his official residence, and during foreign trips linked to wrestling events.
Based on these complaints, Delhi Police filed a chargesheet against Singh and former WFI Secretary Vinod Tomar under Indian Penal Code sections covering outraging a woman’s modesty, sexual harassment, stalking and criminal intimidation, with an additional abetment charge against Tomar. A separate case was also registered against Singh under the POCSO Act after a minor wrestler came forward, though this particular case was later marked for cancellation.
It is this chargesheet that eventually reached trial, and it is the outcome of that trial which has now triggered the fresh court appeal. On August 3, 2026, the trial court acquitted both Singh and Tomar, with the magistrate holding that the prosecution had not proved the case against Singh beyond reasonable doubt. In reaching that conclusion, the court pointed to the long gap before the women came forward, photographs showing them attending family functions and weddings hosted by Singh even after the alleged incidents, and what it called contradictions in their statements.
The magistrate did acknowledge that the women may have stayed quiet out of fear that speaking up could hurt their careers, given Singh’s position as WFI president, but still found it hard to accept why friendly ties continued for so long regardless. It is precisely this line of reasoning that the wrestlers are now contesting in their appeal, arguing that it judges victims by an unfair and outdated standard rather than the facts of the case.
The 2023 Wrestlers’ Protest That Started It All
None of this reached a courtroom on its own. It took a very public protest to force the matter into the open. In January 2023, around thirty Indian wrestlers, including Olympic medallists Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik, Bajrang Punia and Anshu Malik, staged a sit-in demanding an investigation into the harassment allegations and the disbanding of the WFI. That first round of protest ended only after the government promised to set up an oversight committee to examine the complaints.
The promise did not translate into quick action, and that gap led the wrestlers back to the streets. By April 2023, the same group was back at Jantar Mantar, this time with Sakshi Malik breaking down in front of the media as she described how seven women, including one minor, had complaints pending with still no FIR registered.
The pressure from this second round of protest pushed Delhi Police to finally file FIRs against Singh later that month, and by May, the demand had shifted to Singh’s arrest, with the protest drawing support from opposition leaders and turning into a major national story. At its peak, the sit-in grew to include close to 200 supporters holding placards calling for Singh’s removal and a fair probe.
The street protest wound down in June 2023, once Delhi Police completed its investigation and filed the chargesheet in court. At that point, Phogat, Malik and Punia said publicly that their fight would now move from the streets to the courtroom, a statement that turned out to be accurate, since the case has continued through the legal system ever since, right up to this latest appeal. Singh, for his part, has denied every allegation from the start and has repeatedly said he is ready to face any investigation into the claims.
How Rich Is Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh
A case involving someone of Singh’s standing naturally raises questions about his wealth too, given how closely his political career and lifestyle have been linked in media coverage over the years. Reports based on his election affidavit describe Singh and his wife as owners of crores of rupees worth of property, spread across agricultural and non-agricultural land as well as commercial and residential holdings. The same affidavit-based reports point to a lifestyle that includes luxury vehicles, expensive horses, firearms, and as many as three helicopters.
Different reports quote different net worth figures, largely because they draw on affidavits filed at different points in his long political career, and these numbers are not always independently checked. What most sources agree on is that Singh’s assets have built up steadily over more than three decades of public life, running alongside the same political base in Gonda and Balrampur that has kept his family in power for generations.
What Happens Next
That long-running political dominance is now set against a legal process that is still far from finished. With the fresh appeal filed in Delhi, the case against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh remains open despite the August 2026 acquittal at the trial court. The outcome before the special judge at Rouse Avenue Courts will determine whether the case gets a fresh hearing or whether the acquittal is allowed to stand.
Given how closely the original 2023 protest was followed across the country, this next stage of the case is likely to receive similar attention, both from within Indian sport and from the wider public that has tracked the matter since it first came to light.