Indian swimmers Himanshu Nandal and Niranjan Mukundan added two bronze medals to the country’s tally with podium finishes in their respective events at the Asian Para Games here on Tuesday.
Himanshu, the 22-year-old who was born blind due to an optic nerve failure, clocked 5:10.91 to finish third in the four-swimmer field in the men’s 400m freestyle S11 event. Niranjan then completed the men’s 200m individual medley SM7 event with 2:57.01 to secure a bronze, while Suyash Jadhav finished fifth with a time of 3:03.40. However, Chaitanya Kulkarni finished fifth in the men’s 100m freestyle S6 final with a time of 1:12.35.
The S6 classification in para-swimming is for athletes with moderate physical impairments, short stature, amputations, or coordination challenges.
Competing in his fourth consecutive Asian Para Games, the 32-year-old, who was born with spina bifida and clubbed feet, has undergone 19 surgeries since childhood. At the age of seven, doctors recommended swimming as aquatic therapy to strengthen his muscles, but what began as rehabilitation soon developed into a lifelong passion for the sport.
The SM7 is for medley swimmers with movement affected from a low to moderate level in the arms, trunk and legs, moderately down one side, those with short stature, or absence of limbs.
Himanshu, meanwhile, grew up in a family with a sports background in Rohtak, with his father having played hockey at the national level. At the age of four, he moved to Delhi and joined the National Association for the Blind, where he learned Braille. A political science graduate from Delhi University’s Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College, Himanshu initially found his footing in judo and won medals at the national level before taking up swimming in 2021. In 2024, he became the first Indian blind swimmer to achieve the Minimum Qualification Standard for the Paris Paralympics. In 2025, he reached two finals at the World Para Swimming Championships in Singapore.
On Monday, he had finished fourth in the men’s 100m backstroke S11 event here. The S11 classification is for swimmers with near-total visual impairment.
Meanwhile, Ravi Karthik Budigina finished fifth in the men’s 400m freestyle S13 with a time of 5:41.70.
Competing in his second event of the day, Budigina finished sixth in the men’s 100m breaststroke SB13 with a time of 1:14.43. The other Indian in the fray, Jahangir Milla, finished eighth and last in 1:15.96. Budigina had won a silver medal in the men’s 100m freestyle S13 event on Monday. The S13 classification is for athletes with a vision impairment but the least degree of vision loss among those eligible to compete in para sport. Abdul Quadir Indori finished seventh in the men’s 50m butterfly S5 event with a time of 40.84 seconds. S5 is for athletes with moderate physical impairments, such as short stature combined with another impairment, hemiplegia or paraplegia. In Paralympic swimming, the prefixes S, SB and SM denote the stroke category. S applies to freestyle, backstroke and butterfly events, SB to breaststroke events and SM to individual medley events.