Khudan is a village in the Jhajjar district of Haryana, in a stretch of country between Delhi and Rohtak that has sent more wrestlers to Indian Olympic teams than most countries have sent in total. Bajrang Punia was born there on 26 February 1994, into a farming family, and began wrestling on a village akhara floor at the age of seven. He went on to win an Olympic medal, four World Championships medals, and to become one of the most visible sportspeople in India for reasons that had nothing to do with wrestling.

Akhara to Chhatrasal

His father, Balwan Singh, had wrestled himself and encouraged the boy, though the family had no money to spare. Punia trained first on mud in the village and then moved to the Chhatrasal Stadium in Delhi, the institution that has produced a remarkable proportion of India's Olympic wrestling medallists. He was mentored there by the Olympic medallist Yogeshwar Dutt, who took an early interest in him and later helped fund his training abroad.

He competed initially at 60 and 61 kilograms before settling at 65 kilograms freestyle, the weight at which he did all his major work. He was a relentless attacker with exceptional stamina and an unusually strong leg-attack game, and his signature was scoring in the final thirty seconds of a bout when opponents were spent.

A Decade on the Podium

His first World Championships medal came young, a bronze at Budapest in 2013 at 60 kilograms when he was nineteen. He took silver at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and silver at the Incheon Asian Games the same year at 61 kilograms.

The peak years ran from 2018. He won gold at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games and gold at the Jakarta Asian Games in 2018, and took silver at the World Championships in Budapest that year, the best result by an Indian male wrestler at the event in a long time. He added World Championships bronze at Nur-Sultan in 2019 and again at Belgrade in 2022, and a second Commonwealth Games gold at Birmingham in 2022. For a period in 2019 he was ranked number one in the world at his weight.

At the Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021, he won the bronze medal at 65 kilograms freestyle, beating Daulet Niyazbekov of Kazakhstan in the medal bout. Four World Championships medals across three different Olympic cycles is a record no other Indian wrestler holds.

He received the Arjuna Award in 2015, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, India's highest sporting honour, in 2019, and the Padma Shri the same year.

The Wrestlers' Protest

In January 2023 Punia, alongside Sakshi Malik, Vinesh Phogat and other leading wrestlers, began a public protest against the then president of the Wrestling Federation of India, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, over allegations of sexual harassment made by women wrestlers including a minor. The protest moved to a sit-in at Jantar Mantar in Delhi and continued for months.

It became one of the most significant confrontations between Indian athletes and a sports administration in the country's history. The wrestlers were forcibly removed by police in May 2023, and images of Olympic medallists being detained circulated worldwide. In December 2023, after a close associate of the federation president was elected to lead it, Punia relinquished his Padma Shri, leaving the award on the pavement outside the Prime Minister's residence in protest.

Suspension and Politics

In April 2024 the National Anti-Doping Agency provisionally suspended him after he declined to provide a urine sample to dope control officers at the national trials. Punia said his refusal was a protest over the expiry dates on the sample kits and denied any doping offence. In November 2024 NADA imposed a four-year suspension running to 2028, which ended his competitive career at the international level unless it is overturned.

He joined the Indian National Congress in September 2024 and was appointed working president of the party's national farmers' wing the following month. He is married to the wrestler Sangeeta Phogat, whom he wed in 2020, and who was among the athletes involved in the 2023 protest.

Jhajjar and the neighbouring districts of Haryana occupy an outsized place in Indian wrestling, and Punia is part of a lineage that runs through Sushil Kumar and Yogeshwar Dutt before him and continues after him. The akhara system that produced him is old, physically demanding and organised around village and family networks rather than around state sports academies, and its wrestlers have delivered a disproportionate share of India's individual Olympic medals. Punia trained abroad in later years, in Georgia, Russia and the United States, and was among the first Indian wrestlers whose preparation was fully professionalised, with a dedicated foreign coach, a physiotherapist and a nutritionist.

Punia's record on the mat is not in dispute: an Olympic bronze, two Commonwealth golds, an Asian Games gold and four world medals, achieved from a standing start in a Jhajjar village akhara. His later years are more contested, and any account of him has to hold both the sporting achievement and the controversies together rather than choosing one.