Badminton star PV Sindhu lends her support to #metoo movement

New Delhi: A day after Badminton star Jwala Gutta joined the ongoing #metoo movement to talk about the mental harassment she's gone through in her career, PV Sindhu on Wednesday (October 10) lauded people from different spheres coming forward in exposing personalities who sought sexual favours from their colleagues.

Reputations, especially in Bollywood, took a beating when people such as Tanushree Dutta and Vinta Nanda named Nana Patekar and Alok Nath for alleged misconduct years ago.

Jwala Gutta speaks of mental harassment

The journalist-turned-politician MJ Akbar, who is a junior foreign minister in the NDA government, was also accused of misconduct by many journalists.

"I appreciate that people have come forward and spoken about it. I respect it," Sindhu said on the sidelines of the Vodafone event, where the telecom company launched a woman-specific service 'Sakhi'.

Asked if she was aware of any such incident in sports, Sindhu replied, "I don't know about seniors and coaches. As far as I am concerned, I have been on the sports circuit for years and it has been good and fine with me."

Sindhu's badminton colleague Jwala Gutta, on Tuesday, without giving any names, alleged mental harassment by a coach.

In a series of tweets, the former world championships bronze-medallist in women's doubles neither took any names nor mentioned any instances of sexual harassment, which form the core of the movement that has taken India by storm after major ramifications the world over.

Gutta, also a former Commonwealth Games gold-medallist, reiterated her allegations of being targetted in selection. "Maybe I should talk about the mental harassment I had to go through...#metoo," she said.

"Since 2006. since this person became the chief ..threw me out of national team inspite of me being a national champion.the latest was when I returned from RIO. I am out of national team again.one of the reasons I stopped playing!!," Gutta alleged.

The Hyderabad-based player had a long-standing and much-publicised feud with chief national coach P Gopichand, during which she alleged that he concentrated solely on singles players while ignoring the ones in doubles.

(With inputs from PTI)