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Following the material release of former India women's hockey coach Sjoerd Marijne's book ' Will Power – The Inside Story of the Incredible Turnaround in Indian Women’s Hockey’ , Delhi High Court on Monday restrained Marijne and HarperCollins India from publishing the book following player Gurjit Kaur's claim.
Indian women's hockey player Gurjit Kaur claimed the book included confidential information on her medical condition. Also, Marijne mentioned in his book that Indian men's hockey captain Manpreet Singh allegedly asked a player “to stop playing well” to make way for his friends in the team.
A division bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul and Justice Amit Sharma stated that Marijne and HarperCollins are "restrained by an ad-interim injunction from publishing the subject book or any other matter incidental thereto or any other matter related to the subject book in so far as it relates to Gurjit Kaur's medical condition."
Earlier, both men and women's teams issued a joint statement to show their disappointment with Marijne's 'commercial gain' strategy with his book. The players stated, "We have come together to state our deep disappointment in his (Marijne’s) exploitation of our personal information and false accusations. He has used his time of coaching us for commercial gain to sell his book at the cost of our reputations."
"This is a complete breach of trust and his duty of care as a coach. It also leads to all Indian athletes like us to feel vulnerable in such situations. We are in the process of pursuing legal remedies against Mr. Sjoerd Marijne and the publishers of the book in question, Harper Collins."
Further, the Indian hockey teams claimed that the former coach should've filed a record to Hockey India or the Sports Authority of India during the time of the mentioned incidents in his book. They said, "We would like to collectively question Mr Sjoerd Marijne, that if any of the claimed incidence took place under his watch there should be record of an allegation filed to Hockey India or the Sports Authority of India at the time. On checking with the authorities, we have found no such record of complaint."
