The Olympic wrestlers arrived on the banks of the sacred river Ganges late on Tuesday for what that they had introduced as a last act of desperation.

Two days earlier than, the police had violently dismantled their protest camp in New Delhi and dragged them off to detention, placing a blow towards their protracted effort to deliver to account a politically highly effective sports activities official they accuse of serial sexual harassment of feminine wrestlers.

Now, the athletes would throw their hard-earned medals, together with two Olympic bronzes for a big nation curiously bereft of worldwide sporting laurels, into the river after which start a starvation strike.

“These medals decorating our necks no longer mean anything,” they stated in an announcement, including that the authorities have been “going after the victims” to pressure them to finish their protest. “What is the point of life when you compromise on dignity?” the assertion learn.

The wrestlers, sobbing on the crowded riverbank, stopped wanting discarding their medals on the finish of two hours of excessive drama, as group leaders stepped in to ask them to offer their pleas 5 extra days. But their determined act, after they have been compelled out of New Delhi’s essential protest web site, laid naked the shrinking house for protest in India’s capital practically a decade into Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule.

Activists, analysts and opposition politicians describe a sample as Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., has grown more and more allergic to dissent.

The get together makes use of its majority in Parliament to disrupt any debate over uncomfortable points. It deploys the police in New Delhi, which is beneath the management of India’s highly effective dwelling minister, to derail or stop protests over these points.

And, as equally highly effective leverage, it unleashes a nationwide broadcast media cowed to its pursuits, in addition to a military of trolls and social media influencers, to demonize anybody who questions it.

In such an setting, the feminine wrestlers have realized how lonely and draining the method of justice stays for ladies once they face the wall of political energy. Laws have been amended and reforms promised lately after brutal circumstances of violence and abuse towards girls, but circumstances just like the wrestlers’ reveal how misogyny stays deeply ingrained within the constructions of energy, advocates say.

Their plight might have wider demoralizing ramifications as India faces a dire must faucet into its broadly underutilized feminine work pressure in its quest to develop into a significant energy.

Mr. Modi as soon as celebrated these wrestlers, who rose to celeb by beating the percentages in a very male-dominated a part of the nation. But now that they’ve accused the chief of the nation’s wrestling federation, a six-term lawmaker of the B.J.P., of sexual harassment and abuse, they’ve been met by what they name a political cover-up.

The protesting wrestlers — Sakshi Malik and Vinesh Phogat, together with a male wrestler, Bajrang Punia — say that the wrestling chief, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, 66, sexually harassed a minimum of seven younger girls, considered one of whom was a minor, over the course of a decade, beginning in 2012.

Mr. Singh has rejected the claims. “If a single allegation against me is proven, I will hang myself,” he stated on Wednesday.

Officials in Mr. Modi’s get together have tried to border the accusations as a conspiracy cooked up by the political opposition lower than a yr earlier than a nationwide election, whereas saying the wrestlers ought to belief the sports activities authorities and the police to hold out an investigation.

The wrestlers say they’ve causes to not belief the police. It took pressure from India’s Supreme Court to get the Delhi police to lastly register a case towards Mr. Singh. And whereas the Delhi police in different circumstances have been fast to arrest individuals on far much less severe costs, Mr. Singh stays a free man, regardless of a strict legislation for the safety of minors that requires an arrest as proceedings proceed.

As additional trigger for his or her mistrust, the wrestlers cite the occasions of Sunday, when Mr. Singh attended the grand inauguration of a brand new Parliament constructing by Mr. Modi and posted footage of him inside. That similar day, the police tore down the wrestlers’ protest encampment, detained them and charged them with disrupting public order.

It was this last act — which United World Wrestling, the game’s governing physique, condemned in an announcement that additionally expressed “disappointment over the lack of results of the investigations” — that led them to the river.

Protests within the capital have more and more been relegated to a small designated web site known as Jantar Mantar. There, too, permission is required from a police pressure that has been accused by legal professionals and activists of abusing “prohibitory orders” to forestall assemblies of dissenting teams whereas trying away when authorities supporters rally, at instances even with out permission.

Kavita Krishnan, a feminist activist, stated she had seen a drastic shrinking of bodily house for protest within the capital lately.

The earlier coalition authorities headed by the Indian National Congress Party additionally tried to disrupt protests, significantly after a horrific gang rape case that shook India in 2012. But she and different activists have been nonetheless in a position to maintain common protests, giant and small, she stated.

“We were not just picked up and carried off wholesale and prevented from having a demonstration at all,” she stated.

“Jantar Mantar is the designated spot for protest, and the wrestlers are not allowed to continue their protest even there,” she stated. “Even if at the designated places you can’t protest over a sustained length of time, where do you go?”

Suman Nalwa, a spokeswoman for the Delhi police, rejected solutions that the police abuse legal guidelines to forestall meeting. She stated Delhi continues to host frequent protests, significantly in Jantar Mantar.

“There are certain areas in New Delhi district because of security and law-and-order issues as well as traffic issues — they are out of bound for any kind of protest by anybody, irrespective of their political or ideological affiliations” she stated.

When villagers and farmer teams introduced that they might be a part of the wrestlers on the protest web site, extra barricades have been put in — some even welded to the highway — whereas most of the teams have been stopped on the metropolis’s gates. After the camp was dismantled, the police put up giant posters declaring that any meeting within the space was illegal with out prior permission.

On the banks of the Ganges in Haridwar late Tuesday, the wrestlers sat in a huddle as a big crowd of supporters and cameras surrounded them. Thousands have been gathered for the night sundown prayer.

Ms. Malik, the winner of an Olympic bronze and a number of other different worldwide medals, tightly hugged what her fellow protesters stated was a field of her accolades and citations.

Around 7:30 p.m., a gaggle of aged farmer leaders arrived and pushed their manner into the huddle for a gathering. When it turned clear that that they had persuaded the wrestlers to not throw their medals into the river, and to offer the federal government 5 extra days, an almost comedian quest ensued amongst protesters: Where have been the medals? (The farmer leaders stated that they had taken the medals to guard them.)

“Who will send their daughters to play the sport when these kind of jackals are roaming around?” stated Suhdir Kumar, a father of three, together with one daughter, who was supporting the wrestlers’ protest.

“They are doing the right thing,” he stated of the wrestlers. “At least they are opening the eyes of others.”