Manika Batra has denied “claims” from the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) regarding her failure to report coach Soumyadeep Roy’s fixing allegations. Batra has said that Roy, the national coach, had allegedly asked her to throw a game during the Olympic qualifiers.
TTFI secretary Arun Banerjee had questioned the timing of Batra’s allegations against Soumyadeep Roy. This has led the leading Indian shuttler to give a response to the federation’s show-cause notice which states that she did not take Roy’s help during the recently concluded Tokyo Olympics. She stated that the national coach, Roy asked her to throw a match during the Olympic qualifiers in Doha and she reported this misdemeanour to the federation which did not take any prompt action in this matter at all.
Batra said to PTI that she had written to the TFFI in her reply to the notice and sent a letter about how she promptly reported all the allegations to them long back hence the question of not reporting to them five months back does not matter. TFFI has asked Roy to present his side in a written form.
She continued by saying that from her side, she did not oblige him and reported everything to a TFFI official when it happened and did not obey the unethical commands of a national coach. She added that now the federation is accusing her of bringing disrepute to the game in India by the sight of an empty chair of the coach but doesn’t care that the empty chair was due to the unethical practices of the coach and the federation’s failure to act on the reporting of that incident five months back.
Batra is unlikely to report to the national camp in Sonepat before the Asian Championships in Doha. The federation has stated that any player missing the camp will not be considered for national selection. G.Sathiyan, her mixed doubles partner, has already decided to join the camp after cutting his training and competition stint in Poland short and will join on the 10th or the 11th of September.