LONDON, Feb 5: An Indian-origin female golf enthusiast is suing her southwest London club for around GBP 37,500 in damages for what she claims is her unfair expulsion following allegations of cheating in a competition.
According to court reports in the UK media, Rina Rohilla was expelled by the Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Club (RMS) after a competition in 2019 but claims the reason was that members took a “personal dislike” to her.
The insolvency practitioner and club member for 16 years was accused of rubbing out and re-entering her scores on two holes, bringing her total down by two strokes after a competition. The trial, which is ongoing at the Central London County Court, seeks an injunction on Rohilla’s expulsion.
According to ‘The Telegraph’, she denies she cheated and claims the decision to remove her from the club was partly motivated by “unconscious bias” because of her ethnicity.
Giving evidence, Rohilla told the judge that, although she did not know all members of the committee behind her expulsion, they came to make the decision with “a perception that I was difficult or people didn’t like me”.
Barrister Paul Nicholls, on behalf of the club, asked her: “Are you still suggesting that those who took the decision did so on grounds of your race?”
She replied: “I think there was an element of it, yes.”
When told that two members of the committee came from Indian backgrounds, she said that not once in over a century had a club captain been a “person of colour”.
She denied having doctored the scorecard, telling the judge she did not see the midweek competition, which carried a prize of GBP 25, as important and would not have risked lowering her handicap for more crucial weekend competitions.
According to the newspaper, the court also heard that golf had been her “entire life” outside work and her expulsion has caused “severe mental distress, anxiety and disappointment” and a “loss of reputation by being labelled a dishonest cheat”.
The club is fighting her allegations and argued that its committee was “plainly entitled to conclude that the claimant had altered her scores and thus cheated”. 9PTI)
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