Naib Subedar Neeru Dhanda of the Army Marksmanship Unit will be India’s women’s flag-bearer at the closing ceremony of the 20th Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya on Sunday, 4 October 2026.
The honour was confirmed on Friday by India’s deputy chef de mission, Anjali Bhagwat. “She is returning to Nagoya tomorrow morning to be the woman flag bearer. The decision on the male flag bearer will be taken tomorrow,” Bhagwat said. The men’s flag-bearer had not been named at the time of the announcement. The ceremony is scheduled at Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium in Nagoya.
The 26-year-old trap shooter, born on 25 May 2000, had already returned to Sangatpura village in Jind, Haryana, after her third medal. Under Japanese firearms rules, shooters cannot retain their guns after competition and must take them out of the country. She is travelling back to Nagoya on Saturday for the ceremony. Speaking from the airport, she said she had received the call from Bhagwat only hours earlier. “It’s a big honour for me. I didn’t want to let it go,” she said, adding that her mother had told her such an opportunity does not come to everyone.
Dhanda’s selection follows one of India’s strongest individual campaigns in Nagoya. She won gold in the women’s individual trap, becoming the first Indian woman to take an individual Asian Games title in the event and the first Indian woman to win an individual Asian Games gold in a shotgun discipline. She qualified with 118 out of 125, a Games record, and hit 28 of 30 targets in the final, an Asian record. She then won silver in the women’s trap team with Manisha Keer and Aashima Ahlawat, and gold in the mixed trap team with Kynan Chenai on the penultimate day of the shooting programme. The two golds and one silver made her one of India’s leading medal winners at the Games.
The Asian Games haul extends a rapid rise. In July 2026 she won the women’s trap gold at the ISSF Shotgun World Cup in Lonato, Italy, the first World Cup gold by an Indian woman in the event, finishing ahead of leading European shooters. In 2025 she won individual and team gold at the Asian Shooting Championships in Shymkent.
She serves as a Naib Subedar in the Corps of Military Police and trains with the Army Marksmanship Unit at Mhow. She joined the Corps after the Army opened rank-and-file recruitment to women. She took up trap shooting in 2019, relatively late, after being inspired by her cousin Lakshay Sheoran, the men’s trap silver medallist at the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games. Early practice was on a family double-barrel gun and a weapon borrowed from her cousin, often at tin cans, before she moved to the Madhya Pradesh Shooting Academy. She is coached by Olympic champion Peter Wilson.
Her selection places an Army shooter at the head of the Indian contingent for the final parade, after three podium finishes in Nagoya and a World Cup gold earlier in the year.
