Neeru Dhanda Chose Guns Over Dolls, Overcame Shotgun Fear to Make Asian Games History

Long before Neeru Dhanda learned how to hit a moving target, she was fascinated by guns.

While other girls her age played with dolls, Neeru gravitated towards toy tractors and toy guns. She remembers having a wooden tractor, a larger iron one and a pellet-firing toy gun among her favourite possessions.

But when a real gun finally landed in her hands, the fascination quickly turned into fear.

The shotgun belonged to her cousin Lakshay Sheoran’s father, Somveer. An old Indian double-barrel gun, it was taken out one day when the family decided to see whether young Neeru could handle it. At a farmhouse, they placed a tin sheet as a target and fired a few rounds.

The sound startled her.

The gun felt heavy, the recoil was unfamiliar and the sudden crack of the pellets frightened her so much that she threw the weapon away.

“I got scared,” Neeru later recalled.

It is difficult to reconcile that moment with the athlete who, years later, stood on a rain-soaked range at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games and calmly smashed 28 of 30 targets to win a historic individual trap gold.

Her Asian Games campaign eventually produced three medals — two golds and a silver. Earlier, she had won women’s team silver alongside Aashima Ahlawat and Manisha Keer. She then added mixed team gold with Kynan Chenai.

Most importantly, Neeru ended India’s 48-year wait for an individual Asian Games gold in trap.

Yet the medals represent only the final chapter of a much longer struggle.

Shooting Was Never the Plan

Neeru grew up in Sangatpura village in Haryana’s Jind district, in a family where money was limited and elite shotgun shooting was hardly an obvious career option.

Her father is a farmer. The family owns a modest amount of agricultural land, while her mother, Sudesh Devi, has helped support the household by selling buffalo milk.

Even on the morning Neeru won Asian Games gold, her mother was busy collecting the family’s ration when the news reached her.

Sport was not initially a career plan for Neeru. She had played kabaddi and admits she was not particularly strong academically. Shooting entered her life through her cousin Lakshay, who had taken up trap shooting and won a silver medal at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta.

At first, Neeru barely understood the sport.

“I saw him and thought he was doing some modelling-type shooting,” she recalled.

Then she saw his Asian Games medal.

That changed everything.

“I was actually scared. I thought, how would I ever be able to shoot a bird? But when Lakshay won that medal, I became very inspired,” she said.

Her introduction to shooting was modest. She trained with Lakshay’s gun, practised on tin cans and spent time with his family. Somveer, a former national wrestler, helped her become comfortable with the recoil and physical demands of the shotgun.

Eventually, Lakshay’s family took her to the Madhya Pradesh State Shooting Academy in Bhopal for trials.

In 2019, Neeru moved there.

She was still only around 17 or 18.

‘I Had to Do It’

Leaving home at that age was anything but easy.

“When I joined the MP Academy, I cried a lot. I even threw my bag outside the academy,” she said.

The academy initially felt less like an opportunity and more like confinement.

“When my family left me there, I cried a lot.”

But she stayed.

For Neeru, the decision was never only about becoming a shooter. Her family’s financial circumstances gave the journey a deeper purpose.

“Leaving home at 17 or 18 is not easy. You are not mature enough to make such big decisions. It was a risk, but I took that risk because I knew I had to do it, whatever happened,” she said.

“I had to do it. My family’s condition wasn’t such that I could simply stop. If I didn’t do it, there was no one else who would.”

Her life soon became a cycle of training, travel and competition. There was little room for the ordinary teenage indulgences many of her peers enjoyed.

No casual outings for burgers or pizzas. No frequent golgappa trips.

“If there were rotis at home, I ate them and left,” she said.

Her philosophy was simple: success demanded sacrifice.

“If you want to achieve something, nature asks you to pay a price. Whatever you want in the future, you have to give something up first.”

The Cost of Every Cartridge

For Neeru, the financial challenge was particularly significant because shotgun shooting is an expensive sport.

A gun costs money. Ammunition costs money. Training and travel cost money.

Her early journey relied heavily on institutional support and the help of Lakshay’s family.

She received Khelo India assistance of Rs 10,000 along with 120 cartridges in the early stages of her career. She also benefited from cartridges available through the TOPS support Lakshay was receiving before eventually becoming a TOPS athlete herself.

Neeru saw that assistance not as spending money, but as an investment in her career.

“I started through SAI and Khelo India. At the beginning, I used to get Rs 10,000 as pocket money and 120 cartridges. That’s where it started,” she said.

Her advice to young athletes is equally direct: use the support to improve.

“Khelo India provides very good support for beginners. But if a player gets Rs 10,000, it shouldn’t be treated as money to spend on your personal wants, food, clothes or entertainment. You should put it into your training.”

When Neeru first imagined shooting as a profession, even an Asian Games medal seemed distant.

Her initial target was simply to get a job.

“I started with a job as the goal,” she said.

The belief that she could become a serious shooter arrived later. Her performance at the 2022 National Games in Gujarat gave her the first major confirmation that she had genuine potential.

Then came the Indian Army.

Neeru spent years trying to secure her place, dealing with limited vacancies and other hurdles. There were even questions about whether she met the required height criteria, but people within the system pushed for her selection.

Today, she serves as a Naib Subedar in the Corps of Military Police and trains with the Army Marksmanship Unit in Mhow.

The girl who once needed to borrow someone else’s gun now had a career, a support system and a growing list of results.

She won Asian Championship gold in 2025.

Then, in July 2026, she became the first Indian woman to win an individual ISSF World Cup trap gold, triumphing in Lonato, Italy.

But her biggest challenge was still to come.

Three Weeks Without Training

Ten days before the Asian Games individual final, Neeru had only recently been discharged from hospital after an infection.

She had missed around three-and-a-half weeks of training.

Her preparation was badly disrupted. Yet she arrived in Nagoya and stepped onto a rain-soaked range with the pressure of a major championship on her shoulders.

She hit 28 of 30 targets.

Gold.

And she wasn’t finished.

By the time she left Japan, Neeru had two gold medals and a silver.

A Flag That Meant More Than Gold

For all the medals, however, Neeru says one moment at the Asian Games moved her even more deeply.

She was chosen as India’s flag-bearer at the closing ceremony.

She did not even know about it when she landed back in India.

The contingent arrived late at night. After the welcome, she reached home around 2 or 3am. By the following evening, she was travelling again to Japan.

Yet the exhaustion could not diminish the significance of the honour.

“That was an even bigger feeling than the medal,” she said.

“Medals are won by many athletes. There have been champions before. Raja Randhir Singh was also a champion. But the journey I have had in my life, to carry the Indian flag, was a huge achievement for me.”

The moment also fulfilled part of a dream her mother had expressed years earlier.

Around 2017-18, when Neeru was still a teenager trying to understand where shooting could take her, she had asked her mother where she wanted to see her.

The answer was simple.

“I want to see you carrying the Indian flag. I want to see you winning gold at the Olympics.”

Years later, Neeru had carried the flag.

Now she wants to do it again.

“I want God to give me this opportunity again and again,” she said.

“And the athletes who are coming up, who are working hard and struggling, I want them to also get that strength and experience that feeling.”

The Journey Isn’t Over

Neeru’s Asian Games triumph was also deeply personal for her coach Mansher Singh, who had never won an individual Asian Games gold in shotgun.

“When I won, it was special for him because his own athlete and favourite athlete had won,” Neeru said.

Her cousin Lakshay’s reaction was equally emotional — and playful.

During a video call, she showed him the medal while he was at a mall.

“He said, ‘I have won now.’ I had a silver and he said, ‘You have gold. My gold is also here. I consider it my own.'”

At 26, Neeru can now look back at the teenager who left home without any guarantee that the gamble would work.

Asked what she would tell that younger version of herself, her answer is straightforward.

“You made the right decision.”

Back then, she had been thinking primarily about securing a job and giving her family a better life.

“Now, all those struggles have been covered by these things,” she said.

But there is no sense that she believes she has reached the finish line.

She wants more medals. More opportunities. And, above all, an Olympic title.

“I have many goals now. I want to win awards and I also want to become an Olympic champion.”

For now, however, she remains focused on the immediate task.

“The journey has only just started. We are not thinking too far ahead. We are focusing on what we have to do today and how we have to prepare for the next competition.”

The little girl who chose toy guns over dolls once threw away a real shotgun in fear.

Years later, she stood in the rain, picked up the gun again and shot her way into Asian Games history.

The fear is gone. The ambition isn’t.