Chandigarh, Dec 25: Lakha Singh, an Olympian and a bronze medallist in the 1994 Asiad, is driving a taxi in Ludhiana for a meager salary. The talented boxer should have been a coach, but he is wasting away his talent as he has taken the wheel for just Rs 8000 per month.
Singh had won the bronze medal in Asian Boxing Championship in 1994 and a silver in Tashkent in 1995. He was India’s hope at the Atlanta Olympics. He couldn’t win, but he represented India in many international tournaments. However, despite his achievements, he is living in penury.
Singh told TOI that he had written many letters to the boxing federation and Punjab government about his financial condition, but he never got a response. He said that even the taxi he drives belongs to someone else.
He said he was working in the Indian Army. In 1998, he had gone to take part in the World Military Boxing Championship, when he and his friend Debendra Thapa went out of the Texas airport and vanished.
The army said they had absconded. “It is true that the both of us went out of the airport. I tagged along with Thapa, he told me that we’ll be meeting some friends. Then we had a couple of drinks in a car, and trust me after that I never met Thapa. I woke up and found myself locked in a room, where I stayed confined for nearly a month,” he told the Times of India.
He said he was thrown out of his apartment and he did odd jobs for eight years to return to India with the help of the Indian Embassy. He returned to India in 2006, but by then, he had been proclaimed a deserter.