Four Indian Rio Paralympics medal winners — Devendra Jhajharia, Mariyappan Thangavelu, Deepa Malik and Varun Singh Bhati — were on Monday felicitated here on Monday by a host of personalities, including cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar.
Jhajharia had won the gold medal in men's javelin throw F46 and is the only Indian to have clinched two gold medals in Paralympics. Thangavelu also clinched a gold medal in men's high jump T42 while Bhati won a bronze in the same event. Malik became the first Indian woman to bag a medal in Paralympics by clinching a silver in women's F53 shot put.
Each of the medal winners received a cheque of `15 lakh. It was also announced that medal winners in earlier editions of Paralympics will also be presented `15 lakh each.
These include Murlikant Petkar (1972), Bhimrao Keskar, Joginder Singh Bedi (both 1984), Rajinder Singh Rahelu (2004) and H N Girisha (2012).
The GoSports Foundation would also receive `35 lakh to continue its endeavour in supporting and developing future Paralympic champions.
The contributors to the corpus of fund include Tendulkar, V Chamundeshwarnath (President Hyderabad District Badminton Association), Nimmagadda Prasad (Industrialist and Co-owner Kerala Blasters), Dr Azad Moopen (Chairman and Managing Director, Aster DM Healthcare), Sanjay Ghodawat (Chairman, Sanjay Ghodawat Group) and Abhay Gadgil (Director, Abhay Gadgil Constructions).
Malik said, "It is sad that every time we say Paralympics, we have to add it is Olympics Paralymics. It is still not understood that Paralympics also means Olympic-level competition (for the differently abled). I am grateful to Sachin Sir (for the initiative)."
"My world record was broken after 12 years in Rio. Before this, I held the world record in 2004, which no one was able to break. I went to Finland for training and used to train for 8 hours which is the longest training of my life," said Jhajharia.
Thangavelu said, "I wanted to achieve something and take care of my mother (who is a wage labourer) and therefore I started looking for sports. I liked cricket, saw Kapil Dev and Sachin playing and was keen to play for India and win gold.”
Bhati said, "last time in london only 10 athletes had gone and one medal was bagged. After four years, this time we had 19 athletes and four medals."
Tendulkar said he was extremely proud of all the Paralympic medal winners and the others who took part in Rio and termed them "extraordinarily abled".