The wushu fighter beat a Vietnamese world champion en route to the final, days after her rival accused her of harassment following a contested squad selection.
Roshibina Devi walked away from the Asian Games with a silver medal on Thursday, and with it, a small vindication after weeks of noise about how she even made the Indian squad.
The 25-year-old wushu fighter lost the women's 60kg sanda final 0-2 to China's Zhang Xiaoyu, but not before knocking out Vietnam's 2023 world champion Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy on her way there. It's her third Asian Games medal, following a bronze at the 2018 Jakarta-Palembang edition and a silver at Hangzhou in 2023.
None of that quiets the story sitting underneath the result. Roshibina had lost the national selection trials to Divyanshi Choudhary, the younger contender originally picked for the squad. Choudhary was later ruled out with an injury, and Roshibina stepped in. Choudhary has accused Roshibina of harassment, an allegation that remains just that, an allegation, with no resolution reported anywhere in the coverage so far.
So the medal lands in an odd spot. It's a genuine result on the mat and a fresh flashpoint off it. There's no fuller account from selectors or the federation on what actually happened between the two athletes, and nothing here confirms wrongdoing on anyone's part.
Elsewhere in the Indian wushu camp, the results were bleaker. Aryan went out in the men's 56kg quarterfinals. Aparna was eliminated in the round of 16 in the women's 52kg category. Vikrant Baliyan lost his opening bout in the men's 75kg draw. The taolu contingent, competing in wushu's more performance-based forms events, didn't reach a single podium round.
Langlentombi Devi Hanjabam put together a combined score of 18.839 across the women's Nanquan and Nandao routines to finish ninth. Nyeman Wangsu closed out her women's Changquan campaign with 9.573 for fifteenth place. Suraj Singh Mayanglambam finished eleventh in a stacked men's Changquan final.
Which means Roshibina's silver is, for now, the only medal India's wushu squad has to show from these Games. It's also the one result nobody expected to arrive without an asterisk attached.
What happens next with the harassment complaint isn't clear from Thursday's reporting. Whether the wushu federation opens any formal review, or whether the whole thing quietly fades once the Games wrap up, is the question actually worth watching here, medal or no medal.
Be the first to comment
Join the argument. No password, just your email or a passkey.