Bhaker sweeps women’s 25m pistol competition at Shooting Nationals with four golds

NEW DELHI, Dec 1:  Olympian Manu Bhaker swept the women’s 25m pistol competition, winning the individual women’s and junior women’s gold at the 65th National Shooting Championship Competitions here on Thursday.

Bhaker had earlier won the two team gold medals in the same event.

In a stellar show, Bhaker, representing Haryana, outgunned CRPF’s Pushpanjali Rana 33-27 in the women’s gold medal match here at the MP Shooting Academy range in Bhopal.

Bhaker then defeated her state-mate Vibhuti Bhatia 32-24 in the junior women’s title round to bag an individual double. She had already secured both the team golds in the events on Wednesday itself.

On Thursday, she came second in the first semi-final of the women’s 25m pistol event to Pushpanjali to make it to the four-woman medal round.

In the juniors, she topped the second semi-final for a shot at a medal. Vibhuti won the bronze in the women’s event while Telangana’s Megana Sadula won bronze in the juniors.

At the Vattiyoorkkavu Shooting Range in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, where the rifle nationals are taking place, Punjab’s Samiksha Dhingra and Arjun won the 10m air rifle mixed team competition with a fluent 17-5 win over Madhya Pradesh’s Shreya Agrawal and Harshit Binjwa.

Rajasthan’s Divyansh Singh Panwar and Nisha Kanwar and Tamil Nadu’s Sri Karthik Sabari Raj and R Narmada settled for bronze.

In the junior mixed team rifle event, Haryana’s Nancy and Gurmukh won 16-10 over Karnataka’s Tilottama Sen and Darius.

Maharashtra’s Arya and Ranavir and Chandigarh’s Mahit and Harsh bagged the bronze.  (PTI)