Neeraj Yadav

Neeraj Yadav was found dead at a flat in Delhi on the night of Tuesday 27 October 2026. He was 42. He was suspected to have consumed poison, and India's chief para-athletics coach S Satyanarayana told the Times of India: "Yes, Neeraj has died by suicide. That is what I have also come to know. I have been told that he consumed poison at his flat last night. This is extremely unfortunate and tragic."

A postmortem examination was underway at Delhi's GTB Hospital on Wednesday 28 October, with Paralympic champion Sumit Antil and Vipin Kasana present, according to the Times of India. Satyanarayana suggested Yadav may have been in distress after missing the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Para Games because of his doping suspension. "He would have been looking forward to competing at these Games. Medals at the Asian Para Games can bring substantial government cash awards and opportunities for stable employment. But his suspension had not ended, and he could not compete. It is possible that this affected him deeply, but we cannot say for certain what he was going through," he said. The circumstances of his death remained under investigation, and no funeral arrangements had been made public at the time of writing.

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Neeraj Yadav was born on 10 February 1984 in Uttar Pradesh, India, and grew up in Ghaziabad, on the eastern edge of the Delhi region. At the age of seven he was struck by a serious paralysis, described in Indian reports as post-polio residual paralysis and by the International Paralympic Committee as polio. "I lost the use of the nerves in my legs and arms," he told Sportstar in 2023. "It was only thanks to the efforts of my father and grandfather that I eventually regained the use of my arms, and I could at least use a wheelchair."

He said he never felt sorry for himself. "At that time, everyone thought what a shame it was that had happened to me and wondered how I would live my life. But I was already thinking of other things," he recalled. His father had been a wrestler and a volleyball player, and Neeraj followed him to the akhara, the traditional wrestling ground. His father died while Neeraj was still young, a loss the IPC described as the start of his hardships, and sport became his source of strength and direction.

Details of Neeraj Yadav's schooling and any formal qualifications have not been made public. As a young man he worked as a counsellor at a school for intellectually disabled children, where he also served as a sports instructor, and later as a vocational therapist and counsellor at the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre in Delhi. For several years he held both jobs at once, working at the school in the morning and at the spinal centre in the evening. It was at the school that he met a sports coach who introduced him to wheelchair sport, and where he met his future wife, Shobha. He continued volunteering after sport became his full-time occupation.

Yadav began in wheelchair tennis, which he played from 2005 to 2012. A 2013 profile video already described him as one of the leading wheelchair tennis players in India. He later explained that wheelchair tennis was run by the able-bodied federation and offered little support, so he concluded that his future lay in athletics. Financial pressure led him to quit sport in 2012, but encouraged by his wife he returned to throwing.

His breakthrough came at the 2015 Delhi State Athletics Meet, where he won gold in the shot put, javelin and discus. In 2016 he won silver medals in the shot put and discus F55 at the Fazza Grand Prix in Dubai. F55 is the seated throwing class for athletes with impairments affecting the legs and trunk.

At the 2018 Asian Para Games in Jakarta he won gold in the men's F55 javelin with an Asian record of 29.84 metres. Because the F55 javelin is not contested at the Paralympics, he added the discus in pursuit of a Paralympic place, training under coach Naval Sharma. He earned a quota for the Tokyo Paralympics, but other Indian athletes were selected ahead of him. He competed again at the Fazza World Para Athletics Grand Prix in Dubai in 2021, and in September 2022 won gold at the Marrakech Para Athletics Grand Prix in Morocco with a new Indian national record. In March 2023 he posted a national record of 40.96 metres and in May 2023 announced a new F55 Asian record of 38.51 metres.

Coached by former national javelin star Vipin Kasana, he reached his peak at the Hangzhou Asian Para Games in October 2023. On 24 October he won the combined F54/55/56 discus with a Games and Asian record of 38.56 metres, worth 1,014 points on the Raza scale, as India swept the podium with Yogesh Kathuniya second and Muthuraja third. On 28 October he retained his javelin F55 title with a Para Games record of 33.69 metres, with Tek Chand taking bronze. He said his goal remained a Paralympic medal and that it would be "a dream come true to just compete at the Paralympics in Paris". He never competed at a Paralympic Games.

Yadav was married to Shobha Yadav, whom he met at the school where they both worked. He told Sportstar that his wife is a doctor and that she supported him through years when he felt he was not contributing financially. "My wife is my strongest motivator," he told the IPC in 2020, crediting her with persuading him to return to sport after he had quit. Whether the couple had children has not been made public.

He was a dedicated gym-goer who trained around six hours a day, half of it in the gym, and said he could bench press about 160 kilograms. "You can see the confusion in their eyes when they see someone in a wheelchair lift much more than them," he said, adding that he enjoyed motivating other gym users. He lived in Delhi in his later years.

Yadav spoke often of his faith. On social media he repeatedly thanked Bajrangbali (Hanuman) alongside his coach and family after his records, and a 2025 podcast with Gaurav Arora described his "unwavering faith in Bajrang Bali" as a pillar of his resilience. He believed sport had transformed him. "I used to consider myself a weaker person. I used to be scared. But sports boosted up my confidence and motivated me," he told the IPC in 2020. "Now when I come to the ground, I do not consider myself a person with a disability."

He was outspoken about the weak support para sport had once received in India, and about the pressures of earning a living as a disabled athlete. During his doping case he insisted on his innocence and pressed for DNA testing of his sample.

Yadav was one of the athletes who helped turn India into a force in Asian para-athletics. His three Asian Para Games golds, his Asian records in the F55 javelin and discus, and his role in India's 2023 discus clean sweep made him a fixture of a national team that won 111 medals in Hangzhou. His story of childhood paralysis, a late start in athletics and a return to sport after quitting for financial reasons was told by the IPC, Sportstar and several podcasts as an example of resilience. His coach's comments after his death, linking his distress to a long unresolved suspension and the financial stakes of Asian Para Games medals, drew attention to the pressures faced by Indian para-athletes.

Gold, men's javelin throw F55, 2018 Asian Para Games, Jakarta (Asian record 29.84 m). Gold, men's discus throw F54/55/56, 2022 Asian Para Games, Hangzhou, held in October 2023 (Games and Asian record 38.56 m). Gold, men's javelin throw F55, 2022 Asian Para Games, Hangzhou (Para Games record 33.69 m). Gold, Marrakech Para Athletics Grand Prix, September 2022 (national record). Silver medals in shot put and discus F55, Fazza Grand Prix, Dubai, 2016. Gold in shot put, javelin and discus, Delhi State Athletics Meet, 2015. After his 2018 gold, Punjab Kesari TV reported that he and fellow medallist Nidhi Mishra each received a cheque for one crore rupees. His X biography also described him as an election commission brand ambassador. The Hangzhou results were placed in doubt by his anti-doping case, whose final outcome had not been made public at the time of his death.

Yadav was profiled by the International Paralympic Committee in 2020 ("Love brings Neeraj Yadav back to his dream") and by Sportstar in 2023 as javelin's "other Neeraj", sharing a name with Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra. "Right now, I only share a name with Neeraj. But he's an incredible athlete," he said. He appeared in the Sports Authority of India's video coverage, the Sport Circle documentary series "Rukna Mana Hai", the SportSidd podcast and Gaurav Arora's podcast "Paralysis, Accusations and Redemption" in 2025. He posted his throws on X as @neerajy31401032 and on Instagram as @neerajjavelin.

In November 2023, weeks after his Hangzhou golds, it emerged that Yadav had returned an adverse finding in a National Anti-Doping Agency out-of-competition test in Bengaluru, taken six days before he left for China. NADA listed the substance as stanozolol, an anabolic steroid. India faced losing two gold medals and dropping from fifth to sixth in the medal table. Chief coach S Satyanarayana said Yadav had given three clean samples in September 2023, had been tested twice in Hangzhou, and believed the Bengaluru sample, collected with six other athletes in a single room, may have been mixed up or contaminated.

Yadav was placed on NADA's list of provisionally suspended athletes, published in February 2024. In June 2024 the anti-doping disciplinary panel ruled that DNA testing was not prohibited and granted his request to test the urine sample at his own expense. "I am relieved as after months I have a chance to prove my innocence," he told The Tribune. The final result of the DNA test and the case have not been reported, but his suspension had not ended by October 2026 and kept him out of the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Para Games.