Sharmila Dhankar

Sharmila Dhankar was born on 15 August 1986 and grew up in Chhithroli, in Haryana’s Mahendragarh district, in a farming family that stretched every rupee. Polio impaired a leg when she was two. School and fieldwork came first; elite sport did not. An abusive first marriage ended with her and her two daughters back at her parents’ home. She rebuilt in Rewari with her second husband, businessman Ajit Singh — and it was Ajit who insisted, around 2020, that she try para athletics even though she was already 34.

They found coaches at Rao Tularam Stadium. Tek Chand — an Asian Para Games bronze medallist in seated shot put who also coaches there — handed her a shot on day one. Her first throw sat near the old national mark. Within a year she won the 2021 Para National Championships with a 7.40 m national record. Birmingham 2022 brought a fourth-place finish and another NR (8.43 m). Hangzhou’s Asian Para Games in 2023 was fourth again. At the 2025 Worlds in New Delhi she threw 10.03 m for fifth — still her personal best — and left without a medal colour. The distance was finally there; the big multi-sport gold was not.

Glasgow changed that. On 27 July 2026 at Scotstoun she threw 9.81 m to win Commonwealth Games gold in women’s shot put F57, becoming India’s first para athletics champion at the Games and the first Indian woman onto that podium. Ghana’s Zinabu Issah took silver; fellow Indian Shilpa K. Shyla moved onto bronze after a protest. Dhankar had also taken Fazza International gold in Dubai earlier in 2026. She has said Asian Games and Paralympic cycles are next, and that the Glasgow medal was for her mother.

The story that lasts is not “inspiration” as a slogan. It is a concrete pathway: a late start, a Rewari stadium, a coach who had already lived the seated circle, and a family that sold a house to keep training alive. Indian Commonwealth medal tables still lean on weightlifting. Dhankar showed para throws can sit on the same sheet — and that a career which begins when most athletes are winding down can still rewrite a twenty-year wait. What to watch is whether 10.03 m becomes a Worlds or Paralympic podium, not only a national record that finishes fifth.