ABBOTSFORD – Allegations stemming from a minor incident at a wrestling meet in Calgary involving a number of Indo-Canadian wrestlers in the very successful program being run by the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) have led to rampant speculation with little facts about the case as to why gold medal favourite wrestlers like Chanmit Phulka were suspended and unable to compete at the CIS Wrestling Championships in Edmonton last weekend.
“The UFV Cascade wrestling organization is currently investigating a story that could cause a lot of harm if mishandled. From the beginning, the writers working on this have been painfully aware of that responsibility to relay information in a way that is comprehensive, fair, factual, and in service of the public good,” wrote the Cascade, UFV’s online newspaper.
“All this while their supposedly professional counterparts fail to do the same. The coverage to date on the same story is speculative and misleading at best; at worst, it’s false and teethskin-shy of slander.”
It is confirmed that four wrestlers from the UFV men’s team have been suspended due to alleged misconduct.
“On February 27, the Abbotsford News published an article by Vikki Hopes and Tyler Olsen which is little more than a list of dead end leads. While their approach isn’t ideal, the subsequent “coverage” by CTV’s Jon Woodward eclipses it,” the Cascade wrote.
“Woodward speculates under the guise of unbiased coverage, conflates footage from scandals at other universities with no publishable evidence of a link, and, frankly, resorts to gossip: “sources say” it all started at a party … an unspecified social media post supposedly alluded to the nature of the misconduct … It’s garbage journalism.
“The coverage to date on the story is speculative and misleading at best; at worst, it’s false and teethskin-shy of slander,” the UFV paper wrote.
The university hasn’t been forthcoming with information about the incident, except to link it to some allegation of misconduct at a tournament in Calgary two weeks ago.
The team’s roster and photo seems to have been pulled from the Cascades website. Coaches of that team and other teams, and some other team members we talked to, didn’t know what had transpired.
CTV News talked to Phulka, who was to compete last weekend for Canadian national gold but was a no show, outside his family’s Abbotsford home last Sunday, asking him what he thought of any allegations.
He denied there were allegations of harassment, saying, “It’s the investigation, it’s not even started. Once that’s cleared up, we’ll be questioned.”
Another team member, Aman Bains, told CTV, “I don’t know anything about anything.”
The Abbotsford Police Department says UFV did not pass concerns to them. Whatever happened in Calgary would be in the Calgary Police Service’s jurisdiction, but any victim or witness can reach out to any local police to get an investigation going, Macdonald said.
