Indian para-table tennis player Sonalben Patel assured herself of a medal at the 2026 Asian Para Games on Monday after defeating Thailand’s Dararat Asayut 3-1 in the women’s singles Class 3 quarterfinals.
Sonalben registered an 11-7, 8-11, 11-5, 11-5 victory to advance to the semifinals, where she will face South Korea’s top seed Jiyu Yoon on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Indian para-powerlifter Jaspreet Kaur narrowly missed out on a medal in the women’s 45kg final, finishing fourth with a best lift of 100kg.
The reigning Asian medallist opened with a successful 100kg lift, placing third after the first round. However, she failed to lift 102kg in her second attempt and slipped to fourth after Kazakhstan’s Berimkulova successfully lifted 101kg in her third attempt.
Jaspreet was unable to improve her mark in the final round, missing out on a podium finish for the second consecutive Asian Para Games.
In para-swimming, Vaishnavi Vinod Jagtap finished sixth in the women’s 400m freestyle S8 final, clocking 6 minutes and 22.72 seconds. China’s Tingting Zheng claimed gold with a time of 5:15.40.
India’s Niranjan Mukundan and Gopichand Lingutla finished fourth and fifth, respectively, in the men’s 400m freestyle S7 final.
Niranjan clocked 5:38.77, while Gopichand completed the race in 5:40.44 in a field of six finalists.
In boccia, Anjali Devi suffered a 0-8 defeat against South Korea’s Ye Jin Choi in her second women’s individual BC3 pool match.
Anjali had begun her campaign with a convincing 9-0 victory over Japan’s Yuika Sakai and will next face Singapore’s Mohammad Nurulasyiqah on Tuesday.
In the men’s individual BC3 event, Sachin Chamaria lost both his matches on Monday. He went down 1-5 against Japan’s Kazuki Takahashi before suffering a 1-7 defeat to South Korea’s Howon Jeong.
Having lost two of his three pool matches, Sachin was eliminated from the competition.
Earlier, India opened its medal account at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Para Games with three medals across shooting and para-judo.
Mona Agarwal clinched gold and Avani Lekhara secured silver in the women’s 10m Air Rifle Standing SH1 event, while para-judoka Kapil Parmar claimed bronze in the men’s J1 -70kg category.
Parmar defeated Indonesia’s Shidqi Rafli Ahnaf by ippon in just 69 seconds in the bronze-medal contest to secure India’s first para-judo medal at the ongoing Games.
(ANI Inputs)
