Sidhartha Babu has turned up at the National Shooting Range Stadium in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, for 18 years. These days he walks past posters of athletes from other states on its walls. Kerala’s only dedicated shooting range carries none of its own medallists.
“Not even one poster of a state player who is winning the medals,” he tells Read. “That itself shows the attitude.”
India arrived at the 2026 Asian Para Games in Aichi-Nagoya with 168 athletes and a target of crossing 100 medals. Pramod Bhagat and Simran Sharma led the contingent at the opening ceremony, and the team finished with 114 medals, including 30 gold, along with multiple records. Social media was filled with congratulatory messages from politicians and officials.
Sidhartha has lived through this celebration before. At the 2022 Asian Para Games in Hangzhou, delayed by a year to 2023, he won an individual gold in Mixed 50m Rifle Prone SH-1 with a Games record.
That year, the Kerala government announced ₹25 lakh for Asian Games gold medallists.
Three years later, Sidhartha is still fighting for an equal reward for his Asian Para Games gold.
A reward that never came
Sidhartha says the neglect began the day he landed.
“When I came back, there was no celebration,” he recalls with a chuckle.
The state’s felicitations for its Asian Games athletes had taken place while the Para Games were still on, leaving para-athletes outside the frame.
The then CPI(M)-led government eventually offered ₹2 lakh, a figure he cannot explain.
“I don’t know how they came to that figure,” he says. “I turned it down.”
Nimisha Suresh, who won gold in the women’s T47 long jump at the same Games, received the same offer. Sidhartha says she did not grasp what the amount meant when an official asked for her bank details, and she supplied them. The money arrived.
When he spoke to her, he says, she told him: “I still haven’t touched that money. I’m willing to give them that back.”
“That’s the sad reality of things,” Sidhartha says. “I felt so bad for her.” (Read has not been able to independently verify this claim.)
Invitations, but no money
The Congress’ return to power after a decade in the 2026 Assembly elections raised his hopes.
“I was expecting them to correct this injustice,” he says. “Instead they are just keeping mum on this subject.”
The new government has invited him to functions, but the reward has not moved.
At a hotel event before a recent felicitation ceremony, he took hold of a microphone and raised the matter with Sports Minister O.J. Janeesh in public.
The reply, as Sidhartha recounts it, was that technical issues were being examined.
He, however, reads it differently.
“The response implied that, oh yeah, we are not in a mood to give it,” he laughs.
The ceremony itself offered little, he says. Names of international athletes were read out in a rush.
“I’m a Paralympian, and I’m not in that mood to go and receive some plastic memento,” he says.
He was leaving when the minister caught him at the door and handed one over anyway.
Sidhartha Babu (right) receives a memento from Kerala Sports Minister OJ Janeesh
Sidhartha claims that N Prashanth, Special Secretary in the Department of Sports, who was seated beside him, told him the reward was the previous government’s business.
“I cannot throw my gold medal in a trash bin and say, oh, the government changed,” he says.
He adds that the Special Secretary assured him he would bring the matter to the Minister’s notice.
Read contacted the Kerala Sports Ministry for comment on Oct 24 and received no response. A questionnaire emailed to the Special Secretary on the same day also went unanswered. This report will be updated if they respond.
Before the previous government left office, Sidhartha wrote to then Sports Minister V Abdurahiman, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and the State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities.
An order from the commissioner asking the state to respond went unheeded, he says. After the change of government, he sent another letter through his local MLA.
“It drains my energy to actually write these letters,” he says.
At a recent ceremony, he trimmed the edges of a note into a zigzag with craft scissors “just to grab the Minister’s attention” and handed it to the Special Secretary.
Sidhartha’s plight is in sharp contrast to his colleagues from Haryana, who were handed Rs 3 crore for a gold medal and Odisha, where Pramod Bhagat was handed Rs 2 crore for a gold and two bronzes.
The policy gap
Sidhartha’s larger complaint is structural. Kerala has no written sports policy, he says. That leaves room, in his view, for favouritism and for promises that fade once the cameras leave.
“We need sports policy first before you give me a cash award, but still I need my cash award,” he says.
The Centre, by contrast, pays promptly, he says.
“As soon as we land, in 2 days or something, we get the baseline amount.”
The Prime Minister’s congratulatory posts, too, reach athletes quickly and travels the world with athletes from other countries taking a note.
“Kerala could at least manage a message,” he says.
The stakes go beyond one shooter. India’s Asian Para Games medal tally has grown from 14 in 2010 to over 100 in Hangzhou. That growth rests on athletes who train for years on modest means, and on families who watch what a gold earns.
Sidhartha often competes against able-bodied shooters and holds a national gold medal won in open competition.
“What more I should do, I don’t know,” he says.
He insists money never drew him to the sport.
“Nobody is working 15 to 18 years for a paycheck at the end of their career,” he says. “This is a passion for us.”
What he wants is recognition that matches the effort.
“If a film star is getting his money in crores and a sporting star is getting a few lakhs, then how can they both be in the same place?” he asks.
The answer he hopes for is a future where “youngsters can dream about this as a career and as a way of living.”