Abuse Survivor Sharmila Dhankar Wins India's First Para Athletics Commonwealth Gold

Sharmila Dhankar, a 40-year-old para athlete from Haryana, won India's first-ever Commonwealth Games gold medal in para athletics on Monday night in Glasgow. She achieved a season-best throw of 9.81 metres in the women's shot put F57 final, ending a 20-year wait for the country in the discipline.

Dhankar's journey to the top has been marked by personal trauma. In 2012, her first husband, a drug addict, stripped her naked and threw her and her two young daughters out of their home in Gurkawas village, Rewari. Neighbours wrapped her in a quilt, and her parents took her back to their village, Chithhrauli, in Mahendragarh.

“My first husband stripped me naked and threw me and my daughters out of the house. My neighbours wrapped me in a quilt and my parents took us away. I was married at 19; he was a drug addict, and things only got worse after my second daughter was born. As I hold this gold medal in Glasgow, my message to every woman and daughter in India is to fight back against abuse,” Dhankar said after her win.

Her mother, Saroj, who is blind from birth, listened to the win on television. “My daughter was the topper from class one to class ten. But our financial condition wasn’t good, so we had to marry her off. When it happened, I told my husband we had to go bring her back. This gold is Sharmila’s spirit,” Saroj said.

After a divorce in 2018, Dhankar's parents arranged her marriage to Ajit Singh, a submersible pump technician. That same year, she briefly worked as Haryana's first female bus conductor on a three-month contract during a strike, but lost the job when the strike ended.

“Relatives called me a home wrecker when I stayed at my parents’ home. I worked for eighteen days as a conductor before I lost that job too. All I asked of Ajit, when his proposal came, was that he support me and my daughters,” she said.

Ajit introduced her to kabaddi and later to Paralympian-coach Tek Chand at Tula Ram Stadium in Rewari. He also sent her daughters, Anuj and Laxmi, into athletics, left his own job, and took loans to fund training. “I wanted to turn hell into heaven for Sharmila and our daughters. I saw para sports on TV and started her on kabaddi, then took her to Tek Chand,” Ajit said.

Tek Chand, who competed in the same F57 category, taught her to throw standing with the support of a pole. “He made sure my basics became very strong,” Dhankar said.

She won her first national title, competed at the Birmingham Para Commonwealth Games, and finished fourth at the Hangzhou Asian Para Games. A year before Glasgow, her father died, and her mother sold half an acre of the family’s farmland to continue her training. “I was born without vision, but I have raised four children and run this house. When Sharmila needed money, we sold our land,” Saroj said.

Dhankar later moved to train under coach Virender Dhankar in Sonepat, rewrote her national record with a 9.77m throw in Dubai last year, and won shot put gold and discus bronze at the Fazza International Para Athletics meet this year.