Neeraj Yadav, a three-time Asian Para Games gold medallist, was found dead at his residence in Delhi on Tuesday night at the age of 42, the Press Trust of India reported. S Satyanarayana, head coach of India’s para-athletics team, confirmed the death of Neeraj Yadav and said a post-mortem examination was under way at Delhi’s GTB Hospital on Wednesday. “Neeraj has died by suicide. Unfortunately, such a thing has happened,” Satyanarayana said, adding that the athlete’s body was still at the hospital.
Reports said he was suspected to have consumed poison at his flat in the capital. Paralympic champion Sumit Antil and fellow para-athlete Vipin Kasana were among those present at the hospital.
Neeraj Yadav competed in the F55 category, which covers seated field events including shot put, discus and javelin. He was one of India’s most successful para-athletes and his death has left the para-sports community in shock. He was reportedly under emotional distress after a doping suspension kept him out of the Asian Para Games in Aichi-Nagoya earlier this month, though Satyanarayana said he could not determine the exact reason behind the incident.
Neeraj Yadav and the Asian Para Games medals
Neeraj Yadav won his first Asian Para Games gold medal in javelin at the 2018 edition in Jakarta, with an Asian record throw of 29.84 metres in the men’s F55 event. Five years later, at the Hangzhou Games in 2023, he won gold medals in both javelin and discus. The discus gold came in the F54/55/56 class on October 24, and he took the men’s F55 javelin title on October 28. Those two wins took his Asian Para Games gold medal haul to three.
He also won gold at the Para Athletics Grand Prix in Marrakech, Morocco, in September 2022, setting a new Indian national record. Earlier, he had won silver medals in the men’s shot put and discus F55 events at the Fazza Grand Prix in 2016.
The Hangzhou medals were later stripped by the Asian Paralympic Committee after he failed a doping test in 2023. After the National Anti-Doping Agency report reached the World Anti-Doping Agency, the two gold medals from Hangzhou were taken away and he did not receive the government cash reward linked to those achievements. A doping suspension also kept him out of the Asian Para Games in Aichi-Nagoya earlier this month, a meet he would otherwise have been expected to contest.
Neeraj Yadav and the road from polio to the podium
Neeraj Yadav was born on February 10, 1984, and hailed from Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh. At the age of seven, he was diagnosed with post-polio residual paralysis after suffering nerve damage. His father was a wrestler and volleyball player, and He played wheelchair tennis for about seven years, from 2005 to 2012, before turning to para-athletics in 2015.
His first major success in athletics came in 2015 at the Delhi State Athletics Meet, where he won gold medals in shot put, javelin and discus. That marked the start of a career that took him from state meets to the Asian Para Games podium within three years. Coaches and fellow athletes remember Neeraj Yadav as a thrower who built his results through steady work in all three throwing events, rather than through one single discipline.
Satyanarayana, speaking after confirming the death, said he could not speculate on the exact reason but added that a sportsperson should face the highs and lows with equanimity. “I can’t speculate the exact reason, but if you ask me, I would say a sportsperson should face the highs and lows with equanimity. It’s unfortunate that he chose this step and took the extreme step,” the coach said.
What is known about his final days
Reports linked the distress of Neeraj Yadav in recent weeks to missing the Aichi-Nagoya Games because of a doping suspension. The suspension had already cost him his Hangzhou medals and the cash reward that went with them, and it removed him from the team for the latest Asian Para Games. Whether that sequence explains his death is not established, and Satyanarayana said the exact reason cannot be stated yet.
The post-mortem examination at the GTB Hospital will form part of the official record of how he died. Until those findings are complete, the confirmed facts are the death itself, the coach’s confirmation, the suspected consumption of poison reported by PTI, and the presence of fellow athletes at the hospital.