Olympic medallist Sakshi Malik included in Time's '100 Most Influential People' of 2024

Olympic medal-winning Indian wrestler Sakshi Malik was on Wednesday included in Time magazine's '100 Most Influential People' of 2024.

Malik, who had won bronze in the the 2016 Rio Olympics, finds her name in the elite list for waging a relentless battle against former Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who had been accused of sexually harassing several female athletes.

“Proud to be included in the 2024 #TIME100 list,” Malik wrote in a post on microblogging website X, formerly Twitter.

Malik was one of the key faces of the protest staged by some of the country's top wrestlers against Bharatiya Janata Party MP Brij Bhushan last year alongside Tokyo Olympics bronze medallist Bajrang Punia and two-time world championships bronze medallist Vinesh Phogat.

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"This fight is no longer only for India's female wrestlers. It is for the daughters of India whose voices have been silenced time and again," said Sakshi of the movement she helped spark.

She had announced he retirement from the sport in December after Brij Bhushan's aide Sanjay Singh was elected the new president of the WFI months after the former had resigned from the top job in Indian wrestling.

The Anurag Thakur-led Sports Ministry had suspended the Sanjay-led WFI Executive Committee shortly after the elections were conducted on 21 December, putting an ad-hoc body appointed by the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) in charge.

The Sports Ministry, however, recently put the WFI back in charge of the sport in the country following pressure from United World Wrestling, the body in charge if running the sport at a global level.

Also Read | Sakshi, Vinesh on WFI regaining control of wrestling

Besides Malik, Bollywood star Alia Bhatt, British-Indian actor Dev Patel as well as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are some of the other Indians or people of Indian origin making the list.