Vinesh Phogat's husband clarifies she didn't receive any high-amount cash prize

After Vinesh Phogat came back to India post her disqualification from the women's 50kg freestyle wrestling final, rumors spread on social media that she has received hefty cash prizes. However, her husband Somvir Rathee has now taken the same platform to inform the netizens that the claims made are completely false and that she has received no such amount from anyone.

Notably, the amount which was circulating on social media is Rs. 16.35 crore, which is a huge amount of money. Somvir Rathee wrote on X (translated from Hindi):

"Vinesh Phogat has not received any money from the following organizations, businessmen, companies and parties. All of you are our well-wishers, please do not spread false news. This will not only harm us but will also harm social values. This is just a means to gain cheap popularity."

He quoted a post from a person's account which had shared an information that Vinesh Phogat had received an amount of money from a certain political party. The same account came on to apologize to Somvir Rathee after the latter put up the aforementioned post.

"I am sorry Somvir Rathee brother, I saw it on a couple of news websites and also found posts from some big handles, so I shared it, which was wrong, so I removed it," the post read (translated from Hindi).

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Vinesh Phogat didn't get any medal in Paris

Vinesh Phogat was disqualified from the final bout of 50kg women's freestyle wrestling, where she was supposed to take on USA's Sarah Hildebrandt. However, an added weight of 100 grams prohibited her from participating and resulted in her disqualification.

She had approached the Court of Arbitration for Sport for a shared silver medal. However, a few days back, the verdict came from the CAS where they dismissed her plea. That was a single-line verdict and the detailed verdict was released yesterday (August 19) which shared why Phogat couldn't be awarded with the medal.

A part of the verdict read as follows:

"The problem for the Athlete is that the Rules are clear as to the weight limit and are the same for all participants. There is no tolerance provided for -– it is an upper limit. It does not even allow for the weight of the singlet. It is clearly up to an athlete to ensure that they remain below that limit."

Thus Vinesh Phogat returned home empty-handed despite being a favorite for winning a gold medal for India at the Paris Olympics. India won only six medals this time, one short of their Tokyo campaign.