Olympian Dutee Chand Files Case Against Journalist, Seeks Rs 5 Cr In Damages

Ace sprinter and Olympian Dutee Chand filed a case against a journalist, the Editor of a Web-Channel, Sudhanshu Sekhar Rout and RTI activist Pradip Pradhan for allegedly causing her stress during her participation at the recently held Tokyo Olympics 2020.

She lodged the FIR against the duo at the Mahila Police Station in Bhubaneswar alleging harassment by them by publishing news stories about her character and the performance at the Games.

Meanwhile, Chand also moved the civil court in Bhubaneswar demanding compensation of Rs 5 Crore from the journalist for defaming her and subsequently causing her to lose advertisement contracts with several corporate houses.

Addressing a press conference on Thursday, Chand alleged that the news stories published by the duo have hurt her a lot and she underwent stress subsequently affecting her performance at the Games.

It is worthwhile to mention here that Chand had failed to qualify for the semifinals in the women's 200m event in Tokyo Olympics on August 2.

Running in heat 4 on track 2 of the Olympic Stadium, Dutee finished with her season's best timing of 23.85 seconds which was not good enough to qualify her for the semifinals as she finished a distant seventh. She was nowhere near her personal best of 23.00 seconds.

The 25-year-old had qualified for Tokyo Olympics on the basis of World Rankings after being unable to breach the automatic qualification mark of 11.15 seconds.