Devendra Jhajharia was eight years old when he climbed a tree in Churu, Rajasthan, and accidentally touched a live electric cable. The accident cost him his left arm — and, according to an exclusive interview he gave to India Today (republished in full by a mirror site), it also exposed him to a cruelty that had nothing to do with the injury itself.
What did Jhajharia say happened after the accident?
He recalled being told, as a child recovering from the amputation, that he “would be better off dead.” It’s a line that sits uneasily next to everything that followed: two Paralympic gold medals, a silver, and a Padma Bhushan — India’s third-highest civilian honor.
How did a javelin become his answer?
Jhajharia went on to compete in the F44/46 javelin throw classification, winning Paralympic gold at the 2004 Athens Games and again at the 2016 Rio Games — a result that made him the first Indian Paralympian to win two Paralympic gold medals. He added a silver in javelin F46 at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, stretching his record across three Games and nearly two decades of competition.
What did the Padma Bhushan change?
On 21 March 2022, President Ram Nath Kovind conferred the Padma Bhushan on Jhajharia, making him the first para-athlete to receive the honor. It was a recognition that reached beyond his own medal count — a signal, from the country’s highest civilian honors, that para-sport achievement belonged in the same conversation as any other.
Where has he taken that platform since?
In 2024, Jhajharia was elected President of the Paralympic Committee of India, moving from the field to the administrative structure that governs the movement he spent his competitive life representing.
The interview doesn’t erase the early cruelty he described — if anything, it makes the medals that followed harder to read as simple triumph. They’re closer to an answer, delivered over twenty years, to a question nobody should have had to survive being asked.
Everyone featured here is a public creator documenting their own journey. Visuals are official Instagram embeds — we host none of their media, and embeds disappear automatically if a source post is removed. Read our editorial policy or request a takedown.