How three years of protest, an Olympic heartbreak, motherhood and a maternity-leave fight ended with the Delhi High Court calling WFI 'vindictive', BREAKING DOWN THE VINESH PHOGAT SAGA.

On 22 May 2026, the Delhi High Court delivered a verdict that closed one chapter and opened another in what has become the longest-running off-mat story in Indian wrestling. A Division Bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia ruled that Vinesh Phogat - Olympian, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games gold medallist, sitting Congress MLA and, since July 2025, a mother, could participate in the Asian Games 2026 selection trials scheduled for 30 and 31 May. In doing so, the bench dismantled the Wrestling Federation of India's (WFI) eligibility framework that had quietly walled Vinesh out, and used language rarely seen in a sporting dispute: 'exclusionary', 'deplorable', 'retrograde', 'mala fide' and 'vindictive'.

To understand why a courtroom in Delhi was the venue for one of Indian wrestling's most consequential moments in 2026, you have to go back more than three years  to a tarpaulin tent at Jantar Mantar in January 2023, where Vinesh sat down on the pavement and refused to leave.

The Jantar Mantar uprising

In January 2023, around thirty Indian wrestlers, including Olympians Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik, Bajrang Punia and Anshu Malik, staged a sit-in at Jantar Mantar accusing then WFI President Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, a six-term BJP MP from Kaiserganj in Uttar Pradesh, of sexually harassing women wrestlers over several years. Vinesh, who had alleged that at least ten women wrestlers had told her of being sexually exploited by Brij Bhushan, became the most identifiable face of the protest. The wrestlers paused the agitation on 23 January after the Sports Ministry promised an inquiry and constituted a five-member oversight committee led by boxing legend M.C. Mary Kom.

That pause did not last. By 23 April 2023, with no FIR registered and the oversight committee report yet to be made public, the wrestlers returned to Jantar Mantar, this time openly demanding Brij Bhushan's arrest. They approached the Supreme Court, and on 28 April Delhi Police, told by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that they would 'register it today', filed two FIRs - one under the POCSO Act on a minor wrestler's complaint, and another on the adult women's complaints. The minor's case was later closed in 2024 after the complainant and her father told the court that the complaint was filed out of anger; she has since said she had no objection to the police's cancellation report.

28 May 2023 the day everything escalated

On 28 May 2023, as Prime Minister Modi inaugurated the new Parliament building barely two kilometres away, Vinesh, her sister Sangeeta, Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia tried to march to Parliament for a women's Mahapanchayat. Delhi Police detained them, pushed them into buses and cleared the protest site of five weeks. Photographs of Vinesh and Sangeeta being pushed to the ground went viral. United World Wrestling and the International Olympic Committee publicly condemned the manhandling. Days later, the wrestlers travelled to Haridwar threatening to immerse their Olympic, World, Asian and Commonwealth Games medals in the Ganga, before being persuaded otherwise by farmer leader Rakesh Tikait and khap panchayat heads. They sought five more days for justice.

On 15 June 2023, Delhi Police filed a chargesheet against Brij Bhushan under IPC sections 354 (outraging modesty), 354-A (sexual harassment), 354-D (stalking) and 506 (criminal intimidation). His former aide Vinod Tomar was also charged. The wrestlers stepped back from the streets and into the courtrooms.

Hangzhou, knee surgery, and the WFI elections

Vinesh and Bajrang were granted direct entry to the Hangzhou Asian Games 2023 by the Indian Olympic Association's ad-hoc panel, a decision the Delhi High Court upheld after a petition from Antim Panghal. But on 13 August 2023, Vinesh injured her left knee in training. She underwent surgery in Mumbai on 17 August. The Asian Games slipped away.

On 21 December 2023, Brij Bhushan's known loyalist Sanjay Singh was elected WFI President, defeating Anita Sheoran 40-7. Within hours, Sakshi Malik retired from wrestling, calling the result a slap in the face of the protesting wrestlers. Bajrang returned his Padma Shri. On 26 December, Vinesh wrote an open letter to PM Modi announcing she was returning her Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna (2020) and Arjuna Award (2016). On 30 December, when Delhi Police stopped her from reaching the PMO, she left both awards on Kartavya Path. The Sports Ministry had, by then, suspended Sanjay Singh's WFI on 24 December, citing a 'hasty' announcement of U-15 and U-20 Nationals at Nandini Nagar in Brij Bhushan's Gonda bastion.

Paris: 100 grams that changed everything

Vinesh's road to Paris had its own quiet drama. With Antim Panghal having taken the 53kg quota, Vinesh dropped down to 50kg, a category lighter than her natural weight and won her quota at the Asian Olympic Qualifiers in Bishkek on 20 April 2024. In Paris, on 6 August 2024, she produced one of the great upsets of those Games: she beat Japan's Yui Susaki 3-2 in the round of 16, ending the four-time world champion's 82-0 international record. She then beat Oksana Livach (Ukraine) 7-5 and Yusneylis Guzman Lopez (Cuba) 5-0 to become the first Indian woman wrestler to reach an Olympic final.

Then came the morning of 7 August. After ending the previous day at 52.7kg, Vinesh and her team spent the night cutting weight - exercise, sauna, restricted water, even cutting her hair. She weighed in at 50.1kg. One hundred grams over the limit. United World Wrestling's rules left no room: she was disqualified, ranked last in the 16-strong field. She was hospitalised for dehydration. On 8 August she posted: 'Wrestling won and I lost. My dreams are shattered. Goodbye wrestling 2001-2024. I will always be indebted to you all. I am sorry.'

Her appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) seeking a joint silver medal was heard by Sole Arbitrator Dr Annabelle Bennett, with senior advocate Harish Salve appearing for the IOA. After two extensions, CAS dismissed her plea on 14 August 2024.

From the mat to the Assembly and back

Vinesh's pivot from sport to politics was unusually swift. She resigned from her Indian Railways post on 6 September 2024, joined the Congress, and was fielded from Julana in Jind district, her in-laws' constituency. On 8 October 2024, she defeated BJP's Yogesh Bairagi by 6,015 votes, becoming the first woman wrestler from Haryana to win an Assembly seat. Bajrang Punia, who joined the Congress with her, was less successful, but the political reset for Vinesh was decisive.

On 6 March 2025, Vinesh and her husband Somvir Rathee announced her pregnancy. In July 2025, she gave birth to a son. On 11 December 2025, after a 15-month break, she announced her return to competitive wrestling, with Los Angeles 2028 (her potential fourth Olympics) as the target. 'My son is joining my team,' she wrote, 'my little cheerleader on this road to the LA Olympics.'

May 2026: WFI's notice, and the courtroom verdict

That comeback ran straight into a wall. The WFI's new selection policy for the Asian Games 2026 trials limited eligibility to medal winners at certain national championships held in 2025 and 2026. Vinesh, on maternity leave through that window, had competed in none of them. The federation then issued a show-cause notice accusing her of indiscipline, anti-doping rule violations (alleged 'whereabouts failures') and failure to complete the United World Wrestling-mandated six-month return-to-competition notice period after retirement. The notice further described her Paris disqualification as a 'national embarrassment.' Vinesh hit back, saying WADA and the International Testing Agency had cleared her to compete from January 2026, and that the WFI was politically trying to force her back into retirement.

https://www.indiasportshub.com/articles/vinesh-phogat-comeback-put-on-hold-after-wfi-show-cause-notice

On 21 May 2026, single-judge Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav declined immediate relief. Vinesh appealed the very next day. On 22 May, the Division Bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia, with senior advocate Rajshekhar Rao appearing for Vinesh delivered the order that lit up legal and sports news pages.

The bench's reasoning rested on three planks. First, that the WFI's policy was 'clearly exclusionary' because it gave the federation no discretion to consider an iconic athlete returning from a maternity sabbatical. The court wrote: 

'It cannot be denied that the journey of a female athlete through pregnancy and the post-partum period is one that is marked by extraordinary physical challenges… motherhood must be viewed as a natural and deeply significant aspect of life that deserves accommodation and institutional sensitivity.' Second, that the WFI's 'national embarrassment' remark against Paris ignored the CAS award itself, which had held there was no wrongdoing on Vinesh's part. The court called the observations 'deplorable', 'retrograde' and 'pre-mediated', and said they revealed 'the mala fide intent of respondent No. 1 by being vindictive against the appellant'. Third, that since the wider challenge to the policy and the show-cause notice was already pending before a single judge (next listed in July), the just course was to let her compete.

The trials on 30 and 31 May, the court directed, will be video-recorded by the WFI, with two independent observers nominated by the Centre one from the Sports Authority of India and one from the Indian Olympic Association, submitting a report back to the single judge.

Why this verdict matters beyond Vinesh

Read narrowly, the 22 May 2026 order is a one-athlete relief: Vinesh gets to wrestle at the trials. Read more widely, it is the first substantial Indian judicial statement that a women's sport federation cannot design eligibility windows in a way that mechanically penalises pregnancy and post-partum recovery, and cannot use its disciplinary machinery to litigate old grievances (including a CAS-cleared Paris weigh-in) in a show-cause notice.

For Vinesh, the road to the LA 2028 Olympics still runs through a wrestling mat, not a courtroom, and the trials of 30 and 31 May will demand a different kind of cut. But the institutional landscape she returns to has changed slightly. The federation that suspended her, the federation she once protested against on the pavement at Jantar Mantar, has been told by India's second-highest court that motherhood is not a disqualification and that a Paris weigh-in is not a national shame to be wielded against a wrestler.

Three years and five months after she first sat down at Jantar Mantar, that is no small distance to have travelled.