KD Jadhav's family to auction India's first individual Olympic medal after Maharashtra Government fails to fulfill promise

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New Delhi: It was a moment of glory of India, a moment to rejoice and feel proud as a citizen of this country when Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav had clinched the first ever medal for India at Olympics. It was back in the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki that the late athlete had grabbed a bronze in wrestling.

It was then and it is now. Today, his family is threatening to sell off his Olympic medal in order to finance a wrestling academy which the Maharashtra Government had promised to fund.

It was the legend's dream to come up with a wrestling academy at his village, but alas, it has been 65 years hence and the sate government hasn't yet fulfilled Jadhav's dream. "Since then, it was my father’s dream to set up a full-fledged world-class wrestling academy in our village, Goleshwar (Karad sub-district) in Satara. Despite repeated attempts we have failed,” his son Ranjit K. D. Jadhav said in an interview to IANS.

A total of rupees 1.58 crores was allocated for the academy, back in 2009 by the State's Sports Ministry, but Ranjit heaves a sigh saying that yet no action has been taken place.

“The matter languishes in cold storage even after sanctioning the amount and now the cost of setting up the academy would be nearly double," Jadhav said.

“We have issued an ultimatum to the state government till August 14 – the 33rd death anniversary of my father, who died aged 58 in 1984. If they fail to clear its promise of the academy, from Independence Day, August 15, the family and villagers will go on a hunger strike,” Jadhav declared.