The shocking suicide pact that four promising women athletes signed at SAI’s Alappuzha Sports Centre shows the neglect and apathy of officials to the plight of harassed athletes and also throws up an urgent need for sports authorities to appoint psychological counsellors at every centre, says VR JAYARAJ
Alappuzha in Kerala is known in tourism circles worldwide as the Venice of the East and the scenic Punnamada lake here is one of the most sought after tourist destinations in God’s Own Country. But when Punnamada got into headlines last week across the nation, it was not for its intrinsic beauty but for a shocking and painful incident that took place at the girls’ hostel of the Water Sports Centre of the Sports Authority of India (SAI).
Four girls, trainees aged between 15 and 17 and all promising athletes in rowing with several achievements to their name, consumed the poison fruit, locally known as Othalanga, in a suicide pact following alleged harassment and torture by senior trainees and hostel staff.
The incident took place on Wednesday afternoon and by 3.30 am last Thursday, one of them, Aparna Ramabhadran of Aryad, Alappuzha, a winner of four national awards in rowing, including Gold, died. The other three – a kayaker, a canoeist and a rower — are battling for life at the Intensive Care Unit of the Government Medical College Hospital in Alappuzha. They are yet to be declared out of danger, their attending doctor TK Suma said, adding that there is hope that they will rally around and survive. They started responding to medication on Friday which Suma says is a very positive development considering that Othalanga poisoning has no antidote.
Meanwhile, a minimum of three investigations have been instituted into the incident, something that has never happened in the history of SAI, but it is sure to take a long time to solve the mystery of what had driven the girls into taking the extreme step.
Girls’ kin and locals allege that the four budding sports stars were victims of inhuman harassment and torture meted out to them by the senior trainees of the centre, trainers and the hostel staff. There were complaints of a coach hitting Aparna in the hip with an oar. Aparna’s mother Geetha, an anganwadi worker, is convinced that her daughter committed suicide unable to bear the harassment of the seniors.
“On the hospital bed, in her dying moments, my child asked me to forgive her for what she had done. She said she did this because of the harassment of certain senior trainees. She did not want to die and she asked me if she would survive,” an inconsolable Geetha says. “She told me that two seniors used to harass her and the other three girls which was the reason for what they did,” she adds.
She described this to SAI Director General Injeti Srinivas and gave a written complaint to State Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala. Geetha had earlier taken up the matter of her daughter’s continued harassment with the hostel warden and after an altercation, the warden had promised to look into the matter.
Aparna had been training for the upcoming Rio Olympics at the SAI Water Sports Centre for the past five years.S Beena, the mother of one another girl who is still battling for life, revealed the extent of the harassment at the centre, ignored by the hostel staff.
“My child called me a day before she ate the fruit. She cried a lot over the phone telling me about the ways in which the seniors were humiliating them. Her pain was so immense and intense that for one moment, I considered asking her to give up the traineeship at the SAI centre and come home.”
Aparna, who could have got a secure job after she established her name in the sport and who wanted to study English literature after Plus II, was the hope for the family of four which was surviving on the meager income of father Ramabhadran’s job as a temporary employee in a houseboat and Geetha’s work at the Anganwadi. The family situation of the other three girls, all hailing from Alappuzha, is not much different.
The suicide pact and the death have sent shock waves across Kerala and the nation. That the incident has shaken SAI and the Union Sports Ministry too is obvious from the kind of reaction that has come from them. The SAI chief flew down to Kerala on Thursday on the direction of Sports Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and met the girls at the hospital and interacted with the parents of the four athletes. He sat through several sessions of recording statements of trainees, coaches and other staff at the Alappuzha centre through Friday. Srinivas has promised prompt and stringent action if any SAI official is found guilty.
On an order from the State Home Minister, the Kerala Police are holding an investigation by a Deputy Superintendent of Police, Parthasarathy Pillai. The State Human Rights Commission, too, has taken up the matter suo motu and asked IGP S Sreejith to submit an inquiry report within a month. But despite the flurry of enquires, the relatives and localities are unconvinced. “We have seen such knee-jerk investigations in the past and most of them have been forgotten after some time. We know how all this noise will end,” Roy Alex, a local rights worker, said.
On Friday, the girls battling for life in ICU, spoke to a senior trainee they trusted. They told her the names of the Chechis (elder sisters — senior trainees) who had been responsible for their action. They told her the names had been mentioned in the suicide note the four of them had jointly written before eating the poison fruit.
The suicide note mentions the humiliation and ragging they suffered at the hands of the senior students and the staff of the centre and hostel allegedly for having some beer at a function four days before they attempted suicide. Investigators on Friday questioned all the girls whose names had been mentioned in the suicide note and two senior students — one a medalist in canoeing at the last National Games and the other a kayaking medalist at National Games. However, they denied the allegations and broke down during the questioning.
“I have been here for four years and there was no complaint against me. There is no way we get mixed up with them so that I could even talk to them regularly. I stay on the top floor while they were staying below with the warden,” one of these seniors said.
The other senior trainee was more emphatic in her denial. “I was not anywhere near Alappuzha on the days that led to this. I was in Thodupuzha (in Idukki district) and arrived here only on Wednesday. This incident has shocked me and I can’t stand all this finger-pointing,” she said.
Another senior student said there was no substance in the allegation as it was they who had taken the four girls to hospital after they fainted on Wednesday. But questions do not end and one of these questions is whether there was any delay in taking the girls to the hospital and if so why.
According to Alappuzha District Collector N Padmakumar, the delay in starting the treatment could have led to Aparna’s death. However, the hostel warden claimed that they had lost no time in taking the girls to the hospital. It is now for the investigators to ascertain the truth of this but what is clear is that the SAI centre stands as a symbol of callousness in the eyes of the surviving victims, relatives and the local people despite its brilliant track record of producing some of the best water sportspersons in the more-than two decades of its existence where 40 boys and 27 girls aged between 14 and 23 presently train.
“The kind of torture that happens there is beyond description. Coaches and seniors make the junior trainees carry their bags. I have heard complaints that they used to be forced to wash the clothes of trainers. There is no space for complaint. If anyone complains, the impact would be seen in the very next practice session. Sometimes, the senior trainees are entrusted with the task of training at practice sessions and you can imagine what happens then. The trainees put up with all these atrocities because there is the ultimate process called selection for events,” a local politician said.
The SAI staff deny all such allegations. Aparna’s coach Mathew lukose, whom one of her relatives accused of hitting her during training, was in fact all praise for her: “She was a disciplined girl on whom we had great hopes,” he said, adding that he did not want to blame the girl’s parents as they were in pain.
The experts’ view on the issue is totally different. They point at the need of putting in place better systems at sports training centres instead of just following traditional methods. Many of them believe that this tragedy might not have occurred if there was a counsellor at the Alappuzha centre to deal with the four girls when they were in stress and anxiety of alleged ragging.
“It seems that SAI does not believe in engaging even a single psychologist or counsellor to help the trainees in times of stress and strain when rich sports like cricket make it a rule that a team psychologist follows the team wherever it goes. It is nothing but callousness or, in the least, thoughtlessness,” a national rowing star who did not want to identify herself, said. Positively enough, SAI chief Srinivas has promised to take up this matter.
Experts also complain that the sports authorities in India do not give adequate attention to the psychological health of the athletes and this could have been one of the reasons that led to the tragedy. When the standards for sportspersons in countries like the US are specific that sports participants should be emotionally passive and controlled, Indian social and cultural norms tend to prevent sportswomen from showing aggression. According to Suresh R Kutty, a sports science expert, most of the young athletes of India, especially girls, seem to be timid at heart. The Alappuzha incident, according to many experts, could have avoided if the four girls had got timely psychological help and also if there had been a method for regular and systematic monitoring since their main complaint was about the humiliation meted out to them by the seniors.
“In the first place I don’t understand this beer theory. How could the sports centre trainees, especially girls, get access to intoxicating stuffIJ That allegation placed on them itself is an admission by the SAI staff that everything is not in order at the centre,” an Arjuna awardee from Kerala said.
The suicide fruit
Promising quartet
Aparna Ramabhadran- Aparna, 16, got selected to the SAI Centre when she was in Class X. She had been staying at the SAI hostel since then. She had been training at the SAI Water Sports Centre for five years and was a winner of four National Awards in rowing, including a Gold medal. She is survived by her father Ramabhadran, a houseboat employee, mother Geetha Raghavan, an anganwadi worker, and younger brother Anujith who is studying in Class VIII.
Treesa Jacob-Treesa, 16, had been at the SAI centre for three-and-a-half years and had consistently won Gold medals at junior nationals. The last Gold medal she won was in kayaking at the recent National Games in Kerala and was fifth in junior canoe sprint meet. Treesa had a good built for the sport at 172 cm in height.
Sabitha Santhosh- Sabitha, 16, is a promising canoeist who won Silver in the recent 500 metre Women’s K-4 Canoe Sprint meet. She also won a Gold in the national sprint canoe championship. She holds a Gold medal with Treesa in the National sprint canoe championship.
Shilpa kr- Shilpa, 16, is a rower who won Silver in the double scull, 2014, junior national championship. She had gone for a camp in Hyderabad for an international competition in rowing and had returned to the centre just three weeks back.