Maar liya maidan: Vijender Kumar and Sushil Kumar at the New Delhi airport yesterday night. PICs/SUBHASH BAROLIA

Olympic Bronze medallists - boxer Vijender Kumar and wrestler Sushil Kumar - arrived at Indira Gandhi International Airport  yesterday night to a bizarre scene. While fans gathered at the airport gave them a well-deserved heroes' welcome, 'vigilant' cops refused to allow Vijender's father and uncle to approach him.

Mahipal Singh Beniwal and uncle Ramesh Singh kept pleading, "Hum baap hain, hamara ladka hai!" but the police refused to believe them and threatened them with lathis. It was only after the media intervened that the two were allowed inside the arrival lounge.

Apart from Vijender and Sushil Kumar, boxers Jitender Kumar and Akhil Kumar also arrived on the same flight. But the four had to spend over an hour with Union sports minister MS Gill and other babus at the VIP lounge, before being allowed outside.

This added to the frustration of thousands of fans gathered outside the airport.

Long wait

They knew the heroes had arrived and the hour-long wait made them restless. So the moment the four emerged at the arrival lounge at 2 am, the fans went berserk. There was complete chaos as they clambered over the security cordon, jostled each other, to get a glimpse of the returning heroes. All the while, the Delhi Police and the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) maintained a comfortable distance.

"We were not briefed by the Delhi Police that there would be so many people at the airport. It was impossible to control the crowd," said a senior CISF officer on condition of anonymity. Vijender's fans roughed up media persons, while the cops refused to intervene.