The Indian women’s hockey team failed to register a single victory at the Rio Olympics, ending their relatively underwhelming campaign bottom of group B with a solitary point. However, the team’s qualification after 36 years has been lauded as a victory, due to lack of consistent international exposure for the past two decades. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi continued with his felicitation of the country’s top Rio performers, four members from the team were forced to sit on a train floor on their way back home from Rio.
The players in question – Namita Toppo, Deep Grace Ekka, Lilma Minz and Sunita Lakra were aboard the Dhanbad-Allepey Express travelling from Ranchi to Rourkela on Saturday. Upon reaching the station, Sunita was informed by the Train Ticket Examiner (TTE) that the seats were not confirmed. On revealing their identity, the TTE remained unmoved, asking the ‘Olympians’ to sit on the floor as he would be unable to give them a berth, unless somebody vacated their spot.
Lakra said, “The train left the station at around 4, we told the TTE that we were travelling for the past three to four days and requested whether he could give us a couple of seats. He said nothing was available, and that we should either wait for another train or sit on the entrance floor, till someone gets off at a stop. We waited for around hour or hour and a half, before we got two empty seats. We reached Rourkela by 6:45, so two of us didn’t have seats, while the other had two seats for around one hours. We didn’t want to tell him that we were Olympians, but it’s been a long journey and we just wanted a seat. We were also surprised that our tickets weren’t confirmed, considering the fact that we were told that they were booked almost a month before.”
Panposh district sub-collector, Himashu Sekhar Behera vowed to take action against Railways regarding the matter. He said, “District administration is very unhappy that their own athletes have been treated this way. These girls have made India proud and the district proud by representing us in Rio, it is completely uncalled for by the Railway institution to treat them the way they did. It’s their prime duty to treat our heroes in a fair manner.”
Other national team members from travelling on the train, refused to comment on the issue.
