NAGOYA: Indian swimmers Himanshu Nandal and Niranjan Mukundan clinched bronze medals in their respective events at the Asian Para Games here on Tuesday.
Himanshu, the 22-year-old who was born blind due to optic nerve failure, clocked 5:10.91 seconds as he finished third in the four-swimmer field in the the men's 400m freestyle S11 event.
Niranjan then swam the men's 200m individual medley SM7 event in 2:57.01 to also secure a podium finish.
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 the absence of limbs.
Himanshu grew up in a sporting family in Rohtak, and his father was a national-level hockey player. At the age of four, he moved to Delhi and joined the National Association for the Blind, where he learned Braille.
A graduate in political science 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 signed off in the sixth place with a time of 1:14.43 in the men's 100m breaststroke SB13.
The other Indian in the fray Jahangir Milla finished eighth and last with a timing of 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 they have the least vision loss among eligible athletes in a Paralympic sport.
Abdul Quadir Indori finished seventh in the men's 50m butterfly S5 event with a time of 40.84 seconds.
S5 class is for athletes with a moderate physical impairment, 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 while SB is for breaststroke events and SM applies to individual medley events.
