Witness

In December 2023, Sakshi Malik quit professional wrestling. She was India’s best-known woman wrestler – the first and only woman wrestler to win a medal at the Olympics – with fights both ongoing and ahead of her. It was an extraordinary gesture, a culmination of her and many other Indian wrestlers’ fight against the former president of the Wrestling Foundation of India’s (WFI), Brij Bhushan Singh. It is a fight that had seen her willing to risk all she had achieved including the Olympic medal itself. No athlete ends their career when they could still be in the game. But Sakshi has always gone against the grain. In this fiery memoir, she tells her story beginning from her childhood, her introduction to wrestling in Rohtak, her win in the Rio Olympics and her post-Olympics journey, her struggles and triumphs over injury and self-doubt.