The Paralympic Medal That India Missed After Sundar Singh Gurjar Failed To Turn Up

Sundar Singh Gurjar, India's big medal hope in the men's javelin throw at the Rio Paralympics, did not start his event after failing to be present at the time of roll call on Tuesday.

There were three participants from India for the javelin final. While Devendra Jhajharia, who eventually won gold and broke the world record, and Rinku Hooda were present in the call room, Sundar Singh was surprisingly missing.

Sundar Singh's family claims he "did not understand English" when his name was called out and therefore missed the event. He was widely tipped to win gold.

Meanwhile, vice-president of Paralympic Committee of India, Gursharan Singh told NDTV that they would "seriously" investigate the matter.

"All athletes were warming up in the same area, including Sundar. Names of all athletes are announced multiple times for them to get to the competition area. We don't know what happened with him, was he concentrating too much on his warm up that he missed out on the actual competition?," said the vice-president.

"Sundar is very depressed. By the time he got there he was told he had been disqualified. This is a conspiracy and the government needs to investigate this matter," Sundar Singh's brother, Sher Singh Khatana told NDTV.

The 36-year-old Devendra, with a spectacular throw of 63.97 metres in the final, became the first Indian to win two Paralympic gold medals. He shattered his own world record to clinch India's second gold of the 2016 Games. The first was won by Mariyappan Thangavelu in the men's high jump T-42 event.  

Rinku finished fifth at Rio with a personal best of 54.39 metres in six attempts.
 
Devendra had won gold in the javelin event at the 2004 Athens Games with a record throw of 62.15m.

(With Inputs From Suprita Das and Harsha Kumari Singh)