Two female athletes have filed a police complaint against their coach for alleged harassment.
The girls in their complaint said that the coach beat them up for speaking to boys while on a train journey.
Back from the tournament, the girls - students of Class 9 and 10 - narrated their ordeal to the parents, who accompanied them to police station and filed a complaint against the coach Amanat Khan, who is also the chief of Madhya Pradesh Athletics Association (MPAA).
Ritika Srivastava, one of the complainants, said that the coach has threatened not to let them play in future state-level tournaments.
"We had gone to Visakhapatnam to take part in a national level competition. We were four girls and two of us were sitting on a berth opposite that of our coach. We were talking to the girls sitting opposite us. The coach thought we were speaking to boys, so without asking anything he beat us up," said Srivastava.
"We did not say anything out of respect but all people in the train coach were laughing. They heard him abuse us," she added.
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The athletes and their family members raised slogans outside the Ratlam Police Station and beat up Khan.
However, the police officials intervened and took Khan to safety.
Khan, on the other hand, alleged that the girls were cooking up the story to cover their wrong-doings.
"I don't know why these girls are leveling such charges against me, may be because I had told them that I will be reporting their inappropriate behaviour with boys to their parents. So before I could speak to their parents, they told their parents the wrong story and instigated their parents against me," he said.
The girls alleged that Khan had in the past sexually harassed female athletes.