A senior Navy official has raised questions on the selection of an Army boxer over the Navy’s pugilist in the Indian squad for the upcoming Asian Championships in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. According to the Indian Express, the 10-member squad for the tournament includes nine boxers from the Army, while the 10th and final member is a boxer from Rajasthan and not from the defence services. The Navy’s Hitesh Gulia lost out to the Army’s Deepak in the 70-kg weight category. In a letter to the Secretary (Sports), Hari Ranjan Rao, a Vice Admiral in charge of personnel-related matters, has questioned this selection move.
It has been alleged that the selection committee, which was appointed by the Boxing Federation of India (BFI), had two members from the “same organisation whose athletes were competing for selection.” Hence, questions have been raised over the “conflict of interest” and “perceived lack of neutrality.” The letter further claims that Gulia defeated Deepak in last year’s Inter-Services Championship and in the 2026 Nationals.
“Despite this demonstrated superiority and international medal record, Gulia has been placed below Deepak,” wrote the Vice Admiral in his letter. He further alleged the lack of open selection trials and also raised queries on the ”non-availability of video recording of bouts.”
In his letter, the Vice Admiral also requested the Sports Secretary to intervene and consider a review of the selection process. He also claimed that a similar incident before the 2024 Paris Olympics led the Indian contingent to return from the Games without a medal in boxing.
BFI denies allegations
However, the BFI has denied all these allegations, with Executive Director Colonel Arun Malik stating that, apart from CA Kuttappa, the men’s head coach, no one else from the Army was part of the selection committee.
“There is no one in the selection committee from the Army. Even Kuttappa retired many years ago,” Malik told The Indian Express. He also said that there was not much separating Deepak and Gulia, and the federation’s best interest lay in picking the best pugilist.
“I and my team would be stupid to pick sub-standard people just because we want to pick somebody specific,” said Malik.
“Deepak, in this weight category, during the assessment, outperformed everybody in all sparring sessions,” he added.
The BFI also issued a statement, defending the entire selection process, saying all the matches were recorded and the clips were shared with the Sports Authority of India. Denying the Vice-Admiral’s charge, the BFI issued a clarification, stating that sharing the recordings with the boxers or their camps is not standard procedure.
“These are not competitive bouts but structured sparring sessions conducted as part of an evaluation framework. The purpose of these sparring rounds is not to declare winners or losers, but to assess athletes across multiple performance parameters,” it said.