Soman Rana: From a landmine blast to India’s first CWG shot put gold

Double Podium in Men’s Shot Put F57! 🥇🥈🇮🇳

Congratulations to Soman Rana for clinching Gold and Shubham Juyal for winning Silver in the Men’s Shot Put F57 at the Commonwealth Games. Wishing you both continued success.#Cheer4Bharat #CWG2026 pic.twitter.com/soAhRvV5Sm

— Dr Mansukh Mandaviya (@mansukhmandviya) August 1, 2026

The title followed a medal at last year’s World Para Athletics Championships in Delhi, where Rana finished on the podium behind Iran’s world-record throw. On December 1, 2006, Rana, then a sepoy with the 2/8 Gorkha Rifles, lost his right leg to a landmine blast on a search operation in the Poonch sector of Jammu and Kashmir. A national-level middleweight boxer who had trained alongside Vijender Singh, his boxing career ended with the blast, and he spent the next ten years in administrative roles within his unit.

A visit to Pune for a new prosthetic leg changed that. There, Rana met Colonel Gaurav Dutta, head of the Army Paralympic Node, who recommended him for training. Competing in the F57 category, where athletes throw from a seated position, Rana found the mechanics of a shot put throw were not far removed from the punch he had spent years perfecting.

“I was a middleweight boxer for five years at the national level and served in my unit in missions as well before the landmine blast. But as an Indian Army soldier, I was always ready for something like this happening to me. When I heard about para sports on the visit to Pune in 2017 with Col Gaurav Dutta leading the centre, I thought I can bring laurels for India in this field too. One of my initial throws was about 10m but then as we all, including eventual Paris Paralympics bronze medallist Hokato Sema, would train together under specialist coaches, we all tried and learned from each other’s technique,” Rana said.

Within three years of taking up the sport, Rana had qualified for the Tokyo Paralympics. He finished fifth at Paris 2024, added silver at the 2022 Asian Para Games, and now stands on top of a Commonwealth Games podium.

Watching from the stands was Som Bahadur Poon, a former Services team-mate and the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games silver medallist in boxing, now a coach at the Khelo India Centre in Guwahati. Poon remembered how Rana’s old boxing teammates had rallied around him after the amputation. “All of his boxing teammates from the Gorkha Rifles would motivate him and spend time with him at the Gorkha Training Centre in Happy Valley, Shillong. As he won the title today, I plan to call him and reshare all the boxing memories,” Poon said.

Beside Rana on the podium was 30-year-old Shubham Juyal, a Roorkee native and Lance Naik with the 51 Engineer Regiment, who threw his own season best of 13.28m. Juyal lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident on the day he was due to appear for his Army Cadet College exam. He turned to para sports in 2023, after also being recommended for the Army Paralympic Node, and has since finished seventh at last year’s World Para Athletics Championships and won medals at the Indian Open Grand Prix, the Nationals and the Khelo India Para Games.

His silver in Glasgow arrived, by coincidence, on the exact anniversary of the day his leg was amputated, in 2022.

“I have never felt dejected in all these years. Even after my accident, prior to which I was hoping to clear the ACC exam and become an officer with the Indian Army, I did not lose hope. When I started para sports at the Paralympic Node in Pune, I knew that I could bring laurels to the country by winning medals. Today’s medal is a message to all the countrymen who feel dejected after such losses: do not lose hope,” Juyal told The Indian Express from Glasgow.