In a shocking case of indiscipline, an international male weightlifter is under fire for scaling the walls of the National Institute of Sport (NIS), Patiala and breaking into the girls’ hostel, while major national camps are on in preparation for the Paris Olympics.
Amar Ujala reported that the incident took place on Thursday night, when alert security guards caught the weightlifter. Now, it has come to light that the athlete in question is Achinta Sheuli, who won gold at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022.
Before this, the sport of weightlifting in India had been in the news for the wrong reasons, again, relating to discipline issues. At that time, two years ago, Jeremy Lalrinnunga was guilty. He was thrown out of the national camp as the Indian Weightlifting Federation did not want any lifter in the camp who is “a nuisance”.
RevSportz has learnt that at that time, Jeremy was in for serious trouble as a female athlete’s parent wanted to escalate the matter and take legal action. However, the federation ensured there was peace.
What has happened on Thursday night has caused a major storm. The name of Achinta has been confirmed. It is believed he scaled the walls at the NIS campus, and security guards caught him and even took videos. The matter is being investigated at a very high level by the Sports Authority of India (SAI) and the Indian Weightlifting Federation.
The NIS has separate hostels for male and female athletes. Security is of huge importance and a breach like this has many officials worried. RevSportz has learnt the latest incident has been taken note of very seriously.
None of the officials was available for an official comment. One person, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the name of Achinta. Jeremy did make a comeback two months ago at the National Championship in January when he won gold. But he is still not in the national camp.
Achinta has been sent back home, to a small town near Kolkata. This could well be the end of the road in his weightlifting career. In the past, Sahdev Yadav had told this writer that discipline was top priority. His reference at that time was to cleaning up the doping taint. For a sport which has been shamed in the past over doping incidents, even leading to a ban, these recent incidents of young male wrestlers becoming a menace are not good news.