On Tuesday, at the Jaipal Singh Stadium in Ranchi, a 25-year-old national-level wrestler, Vishal Kumar Verma, died because of electrocution due to a short circuit at the dilapidated stadium building which houses the office of the Jharkhand State Wrestling Association (JSWA).
This story has taken the entire country by storm. People are sad, shocked and all kinds of disgusted as to how an accident like this one can ever take place.
This indoor stadium was built in 1978 and had been flooding with rainwater since the beginning of monsoon this year. The condition became even worse due to really heavy rains. Clearly, no action was taken to rectify that issue for a long time since it had been raining heavily for the past couple of weeks.
The saddest part of this story — Vishal was actually trying to clear out the water using a pump when the incident took place.
Who is to blame?
People took to Twitter to vent out their anger. One such user posted the image of the stadium in question and the state of the stadium will have your blood boil.
National level wrestler died in Ranchi after being electrocuted at stadium. This is the stadium. Governments should hang their head in shame pic.twitter.com/OKoW0vcYCR
— Rahul Raj (@bhak_sala) August 10, 2017
This is not any swimming pool, but state government wrestling building where a wrestler died because he was trying to clean the mess. Awful pic.twitter.com/a7ozBbwlPK
— Rahul Raj (@bhak_sala) August 10, 2017
People are obviously furious. A life has been lost because of govt’s apathy.
The sports minister should be made to resign over this life lost
— Nandita Iyer 🌱 (@saffrontrail) August 10, 2017
Where does the huge money that states, municipalities, union, districts, sports ministries etc allocate go? @VijayGoelBJP
— SAM gab.ai/Manuputra (@ManuPutra) August 10, 2017
And we expect our sportsmen to win medals at international level. Pathetic.
— Ashok (ಅಶೋಕ – अशोक) (@ashokshetty1970) August 10, 2017
After receiving flak from the general public, Sports Minister Vijay Goel took to Twitter to respond.
Deeply hurt to know about this horrific incident. Will check with the concerned officials, no room for such lapse: Sh. V Goel [Office of VG] https://t.co/SEx6hjoJs5
— Vijay Goel (@VijayGoelBJP) August 10, 2017
Bas hogaya? Shameful! Why did it happened in first place. Maybe last year criticism didn’t work
— MishTi (@Misstiiq) August 10, 2017
While this nation expects gold at Olympics, the sad reality of how our sportsperson actually trains and the lack of infrastructure is beyond deplorable.
