Wrestling Federation of India suspends tainted CWG referee Virender Malik

New Delhi: Wrestling Federation of India on Monday suspended referee Virender Malik, who was detained on charges of alleged sexual assault in Glasgow during the recently-concluded 20th Commonwealth Games, with immediate effect.

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The president of WFI, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh took the decision to suspend the tainted official but the Federation would wait for details from Scotland police before making his ban permanent.

"The news of Malik's arrest came yesterday and since it was a Sunday and the office was close, the decision to suspend Malik was taken today by the WFI President. The first thing the President did today was issue a suspension against Malik with immediate effect," Assistant secretary of WFI, Vinod Tomar said.

"We are, however, awaiting the investigation report before finalising his suspension. Once we get the report and are satisfied that the charges against him are true, we will suspend him permanently from all national and international tournaments," he added.

Tomar said that WFI would need to make sure on its part if Malik was actually guilty. "We don't know what happened in Glasgow. We need to make sure that charges against him are all correct before taking any harsh action against him," he insisted.

The Assistant Secretary said that Malik had been to a number of countries before as a wrestling referee but no such incident has ever been reported.

"Recently also he had been to Slovakia as a referee in a competition but no such incident was reported. If we even had an iota of knowledge about his background, we would not have sent him to any international tournament," said Tomar.

Besides Malik, IOA Secretary General Rajeev Mehta was also arrested for alleged drunken driving.