SAI plays safe, DG says law will decide what led to suicide

New Delhi: Sports Authority of India Director General Injeti Srinivas on Saturday said that he would not completely rule out "foul play" in suicide incident of four female trainees at the SAI Center in Alapuzha but made it clear that it was not the job of his agency or the government to decide on what led them to take the extreme step.

In a tragic turn of events, a young athlete Aparna Ramabhadran died and three of her colleagues were admitted to hospital under critical conditions after they ate a poison fruit under an apparent suicide pact following alleged harassment by their seniors at the Water Sports Centre of the SAI in Alapuzha.

Srinivas, who made a one-day visit to Kerala for an on spot "administrative" assessment after the shocking incident, said that he cannot pre-empt the investigative work of the police or the judicial process by commenting on the reasons of the suicide.

"It is possible that there were some foul play. Something did happen. But would that lead to a situation to compel the young girls to take the extreme step of suicide, that law will decide. I had gone for an on spot administrative assessment on directives of Sports Minister. I will submit a report to the Sports Minister and he will take a call on what we need to do on our part," Srinivas, who returned from Kerala, said at a press conference here.

"There was dying declaration, suicide pact, statement taken by the police from the surviving girls and other inmates of the SAI Center but how can I speak about the veracity of these things. These are not our job but of the law enforcement agencies.

"This is a case where multiple agencies, including police and Human Right Commission are investigating. I cannot pre-empt these investigations and judicial process," he added, pleading to report carefully on the sensitive issue.

Asked if there was harassment by the seniors as has been alleged which might have led to the suicide of the girls, Srinivas said, "I have enquired the SAI warden and spoken to the other inmates at the center but they did not say anything about it (alleged harassment by seniors."

"I also visited the boys hostel and talked to the boys and they could not figure what could have gone wrong. All my enquiries reveal that they could not find the reason (of suicide)," he added.

Srinivas also dismissed any notion of delay and deliberate negligence by authorities while taking the girls to the hospital.

"There was no deliberate negligence. At 3pm, the girls apparently took the poison fruit and at 7:30pm at the dining table, they did not have dinner, saying that they had eaten a lot and stomach full. Then only there was a suspicion of something happening and they were immediately taken to hospital and within one hour pacemakers were put on them," he explained.

"The assess to the poisonous fruit is not an issue. It is like a mango and it is easily available. Authorities there said that cases of consuming poison fruit was in the range of five to six hundreds every year."

Asked if there could have been issues of ragging at the hostel, he said, "It is difficult to talk about it. If you are talking about ragging in the legal sense, there are Acts to deal with it."

He admitted that there were no CCTV cameras at the hostel to tract any incidents like ragging.

He also said that the three girls who were admitted to the hospital have improved "substantially" but will have to be monitored for another three days to bring them out of trouble.

"Medical attention of surviving girls are our priority. A medical board of experts from AIIMS has been set up as also another board of doctors from government hospitals. They had consultations through video conference and the treatment was reviewed in detail. After inputs from AIIMS experts the line of treatment was modified by the local doctors," he said.

"The latest input I got is that, the condition of the girls have improved substantially but they have to be kept at the hospital for another 72 hours. The poison fruit that had entered their systems must have entered the tissues and they will have to be kept for 72 hours more to ensure that they are 100 per cent out of trouble. All the parameters are showing signs of improvement," said the SAI DG.

Srinivas said he also met the parents of the deceased girl and those of the girls admitted to the hospital.

"SAI is also still in a state of shock and I shared our agony with the parents of the girl who is no more and of those who are now at the hospital. I assured them all help from the side of the government.

"We have given a solatium of Rs 5 lakh to the parents of the deceased girl and offered a job to them on contract basis at a SAI Center. We realised that they were in a great difficulty," he said.

"The parents of the girls who are now at the hospital did not make any statement about any unhappiness of their children at the training center," he added.

Srinivas expressed concern at the "psychological trauma" faced by the other trainees at the SAI Center and said he has instructed immediate appointment of counselling psychologists to take care of them.

"There are other 22 girl trainees there at the center and for a variety of reasons they are also facing psychological trauma. I explained them that while the organisation (SAI) is supporting them, at the same time they will have to cooperate with law enforcement agencies in their investigations. I have instructed to make a counselling psychologist to be available for them at the center to take care of them," he said.

Srinivas, however, said that the incident of suicide has become a trigger for SAI to upgrade its systems.

He insisted that SAI will have to appoint counselling psychologists at its centers, besides introducing Yoga, mentorship by former top athletes and establishing a helpline to immediately attend to the grievances of the athletes.

Srinivas said that there was also a proposal from Sports Minister Sarbananda Sonowal to set up a committee of experts that would include expert coaches and former athletes to submit a report within a month on how to deal with such issues.

"With the changing circumstances, we have to upgrade our systems. We will start the system of having counselling psychologists at our hostels. This is different from having sports psychologists for different disciplines which is required for better performance on the field. We will also introduce Yoga at our centers which will help in maintaining physical, mental and emotional stability of the athletes.

"We are also planning a system of former top sportspersons mentoring the young athletes by adopting SAI Centers depending on their location at the vicinity. We have 250 SAI Centres and 75 core centers. We would ask a former sportsperson to voluntarily come forward and adopt a core center to mentor the young athletes," he explained.

"It is not a big number. We need 75 former sportspersons who could be role models to the young athletes and who can give us feedbacks and suggestions. They are former stars and they can reach or write directly to the sports minister and we can act fast on that.

"We are also planning to have a helpline connected to all our centers so that the athletes can directly air their grievances without going through the formal procedure," Srinivas added.