Toppo started fight, says hockey player Hardeep

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, November 28

Having badly bruised in the Nehru Hockey Senior Tournament two days ago, Punjab Police team defender Hardeep Singh says that his team was being wrongly blamed as being more aggressive after the on-field brawl with Punjab National Bank players.

Taking treatment at the Civil Hospital here, Hardeep has got multiple stitches on the left side of his head and has injuries on his waist too.

“You can watch videos of the match on a big screen and play them at a slow speed. It is for everyone to see that it was Sumit Toppo who picked up the fight first. He had been giving me provocations since the previous match. That day too, he was passing certain remarks against me. He hit me first with a hockey stick on my head and waist and I confess that I hit him too. But had he not started it all, nothing would have happened,” says Hardeep, who is seen in a red jersey with a white handkerchief on his head in the match.

The player, who hails from the Mithapur locality in Jalandhar, to which Olympian-cum-Congress MLA Pargat Singh belongs, is peeved over reports that blame him and his team for showing more violence than the PNB counterparts during the match. “The score was 3-3. It was the third quarter of the match. Clearly, the excitement level was high. But I had no intention to spoil the game like this. Both teams showed aggression but we have been suspended from the game for four years and the PNB only for two years, even though they too were equally at fault. I fail to understand why everyone is taking sides with them,” said Hardeep, a national-level player who got posted in the Punjab Police two years ago.