Delhi court acquits Brij Bhushan Singh and Vinod Tomar in the case filed by six women wrestlers

A Delhi court has acquitted Brij Bhushan Singh, the former president of the Wrestling Federation of India, and his associate Vinod Tomar in the criminal case brought by six women wrestlers, according to BBC reporting on Monday. Both were found not guilty on all remaining charges.

The case reached the Rouse Avenue Metropolitan Magistrate courts in April 2023, when two first information reports were registered on complaints by six wrestlers who said they had been molested and sexually harassed while they were athletes under his tenure. Charges were framed in 2024.

How the case narrowed before the verdict

One count had been dropped well before the trial ended. The complaint originally included an allegation involving a minor; that count was withdrawn in May 2025, leaving the case to be decided on the allegations made by adult wrestlers.

• April 2023: two first information reports registered on the wrestlers' complaints.
• 2024: charges framed in the matter.
• May 2025: the count relating to a minor dropped.
• August 3, 2026: acquittal for both accused.

Singh headed the national federation from 2012 to 2021, a period in which the body was repeatedly in open dispute with athletes over coaching selections, prize money and the representation of women competitors. The legal case ran alongside that argument and became its most public form.

Six years of proceedings have produced a binary result. The verdict resolves the charges brought by the complainants; it does not adjudicate whether the institutional complaints they made about the sport were well founded.

Reporting on the day of the verdict did not describe any surviving count that the court treated as a minor offence, and no separate case arising from the same period featured in the accounts. The judgment text has not been summarised in the reports cited here.