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While the entire country celebrates the medal winners and great achievers from India at the Rio Olympics 2016, a certain section of the other Olympians weren’t even recognised for their efforts and were left in a pathetic state. Case in point being the women’s hockey team which played in Rio.

On their journey back home, four members of the Indian Women’s Hockey Team, who hailed from Odisha, were made to sit on the floor of the train from Ranchi to Rourkela because their tickets were unconfirmed.

“We asked the TTE to allot berths to us but he denied. After travelling for about an hour, we got seats.”

Deep Grace Ekka, Namita Toppo, Lilima Minz, and Sunita Lakra were on board the Dhanbad-Alleppey Express on Saturday to return to their hometown of Odisha. Since they did not have confirmed berths allotted to them, they were made to sit on the floor and travel, until they got seats.

This shows a disparity in behaviour with our Olympians and how medal winners were awarded Khel Ratnas and BMWs and the ones who didn’t shine were left in such sorry states.

Sundargarh sub-collector Himanshu Sekhar Behera was unhappy with this treatment and was quoted as saying, “We will draw the attention of the railways about the incident. They should have been provided seats. It is the responsibility of the department to take care of them.”

This difference in behaviour with our Olympians needs to change.

News source: Deccan Chronicle

Cover image sources: 1 & 2