Ishan Crawford India’s Supreme Court on Friday allowed wrestler Vinesh Phogat to enter the selection trials for the 2026 Asian Games, refusing to stay a Delhi High Court order that had cleared her way back onto the mat. The trials begin on Saturday, May 30. “We are not stopping, you go and participate,” Justice PS Narasimha told her counsel in open court.
Read the headlines and it looks like a straightforward win. Sit through the hearing and the picture turns murkier. The same two-judge bench that let her compete spent much of the morning tearing into the legal reasoning that earned her the right, and pointing at a doping test she skipped in January that no one in the room could explain away.
What the Bench Directed Before the Weekend Trials
The order came from a bench of Justice PS Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe, hearing a plea by the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI, the national body that picks the country’s wrestling squads for events including the 2026 Asian Games in Japan). The federation wanted the court to freeze the High Court order. The judges declined.
Instead they issued a narrow, time-bound direction: Phogat must be allowed to take part in the trials beginning May 30, with the larger questions parked for a later hearing. The bench issued notice to Phogat on the WFI petition and said it would examine the issues in due course.
Her lawyer, senior advocate Madhavi Divan, had asked that participation be granted subject to the outcome of the litigation, an offer the court effectively accepted. So she wrestles this weekend with her place on any Asian Games team still hanging on a case, Wrestling Federation of India v. Vinesh Phogat, that has barely begun. The judges were blunt about why they would not pull the plug now.
We don’t want to get into an argument as if her pregnancy is the cause of this kind of situation. That approach is unacceptable. Today, there is a direction she must be permitted to participate. To that extent, it may not be correct for us to withdraw that.
That was Justice Narasimha, making clear in the same breath that the bench disagreed with how the relief had been framed in the High Court.
The Missed Doping Test the Court Would Not Wave Through
If a maternity argument carried Phogat in the High Court, it was anti-doping compliance that nearly sank her in the Supreme Court. Justice Narasimha kept circling back to it.
Why Whereabouts Failures Matter
Elite athletes in a registered testing pool have to tell anti-doping authorities where they will be, every day, so testers can arrive unannounced. Miss enough of those windows and the misses themselves become a violation, whether or not any banned substance is ever found.
- Athletes file quarterly whereabouts, including a daily 60-minute slot for out-of-competition testing.
- A skipped test or a botched filing counts as a “whereabouts failure.”
- Three such failures inside 12 months add up to a rule violation under the World Anti-Doping Code.
- Sanctions for that kind of violation can stretch to two years out of competition.
Anti-doping for the sport is run by the International Testing Agency (ITA), which manages the programme for the global wrestling body, United World Wrestling.
Phogat’s Account, and the Court’s Doubt
Phogat missed a doping test in January, the court noted, after telling officials she had to attend the Haryana Assembly as a sitting member. The ITA did not accept that explanation. Phogat has said publicly that she owned up to a single whereabouts slip, apologised, and was tested twice afterwards with no issue.
The same agency had told her in July 2025 that she could resume competition from January 1, 2026; weeks into that eligibility window, the January test was missed. The bench was not persuaded the lapse could be brushed aside as a domestic matter. Justice Narasimha put it sharply: “What is concerning when the ITA test is missed, it has a logical consequence, because Indian sports is integrally connected to the world sports. If some kind of disqualification appears at the global level, it reflects on India. You did not give the whereabouts for the doping test and missed the first doping test.”
A Motherhood Argument the Justices Declined to Endorse
The Delhi High Court had framed Phogat’s exclusion as a women’s-rights problem, holding that the federation’s policy was “clearly exclusionary” because it gave the body no room to make space for an iconic athlete returning from maternity leave. The Supreme Court did not buy the framing. Justice Narasimha said he was surprised the High Court had branded the policy exclusionary when its terms applied to every wrestler alike.
The bench’s discomfort was specific. It did not dispute that motherhood should never be punished; what it rejected was treating a compliance failure as if it were a maternity hardship. The WFI’s counsel pressed the same point, telling the judges, “There are other mothers too,” and that the contested circulars had existed since 2024.
For all that, the court would not toss out the relief. Justice Narasimha balanced the criticism with a nod to her standing: “You are an excellent wrestler, you have made the country proud, but it’s the country first. The High Court can’t disrupt the entire schedule.” Divan, for her part, warned that shutting Phogat out carried a cost of its own, telling the bench, “If I am not allowed to participate, that will be a national embarrassment.”
From a Single Judge to the Supreme Court in Eight Days
The speed of the case is part of the story. In barely a week, her bid went from a refusal, to a sweeping win, to a Supreme Court hearing that left both intact and unsettled.
- A single judge of the Delhi High Court declined interim relief in her petition challenging the WFI selection policy and a show-cause notice issued against her.
- On May 22, a division bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia reversed course, ruling she must be allowed into the trials on May 30 and 31.
- The same bench ordered the trials video-recorded, with independent observers from the Sports Authority of India and the Indian Olympic Association overseeing them.
- The WFI moved the Supreme Court; on May 29 the bench refused to stay the order but agreed to examine the dispute later.
The Supreme Court had a pointed word about the lower-court process too. Justice Narasimha said the single judge had not been justified in adjourning the matter to July, a delay that pushed the appeal up to the division bench. On the recording safeguard, the apex court left the transparency conditions undisturbed.
Where the WFI and Phogat Still Disagree
Strip away the courtroom theatre and the two sides are arguing about four things. The table below lays out where each stands.
| Issue | WFI’s position | Phogat’s position |
|---|---|---|
| The selection policy | Terms apply across the board, with no carve-out for any athlete | Rewritten to weigh past performances, “tailor-made to exclude her” |
| Anti-doping record | Compliance with global testing rules is non-negotiable | Cleared after an apology, tested twice since with no issue |
| Post-retirement notice | A waiting period is mandatory under world-body rules | Sabbatical and maternity warrant some discretion |
| Motive | “There are other mothers too”; no targeted exclusion | The show-cause notice was vindictive and in bad faith |
The federation leans on the rulebook. Under United World Wrestling’s eligibility rules, a wrestler coming back from retirement has to serve a notice period and re-enter the testing pool before competing, and the WFI says it applied those terms to everyone.
Divan alleged the policy had been redrawn to count past performances precisely to keep her client out, calling it “tailor-made to exclude her.” The High Court went further, branding the show-cause notice “deplorable” and the federation’s conduct vindictive. The federation denies any targeted exclusion.
What neither side disputes is that the fight is now bigger than one weekend’s trials. Whatever the bench decides at the next hearing will draw the line between a federation’s rulebook and a court’s power to bend it.
Paris, Politics and What Rides on Saturday
Phogat is no marginal name in Indian sport. A three-time Olympian and Asian Games gold medallist, she became a national talking point in 2024 when she reached an Olympic final in Paris and was disqualified the next morning for being 100 grams over the 50kg limit, a story told in detail by the Olympic movement’s account of her disqualification at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Since then her career has braided into politics. In late 2024 she won the Julana assembly seat in Haryana on a Congress ticket, and WFI president Sanjay Singh has publicly accused her of dragging wrestling into party politics. She had stepped away from the mat in December 2024, became a mother in July 2025, and pointed to that break in arguing for a path back, while the federation pointed to the rulebook.
So she wrestles on Saturday, cameras rolling and observers watching. If she makes the team and the pending case later upholds her eligibility, the maternity-return question gets a precedent that outlasts one athlete. If the doping-compliance doubt the Supreme Court flagged hardens into a finding, the place she wins this weekend could be the place she loses in court.
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