Anish Bhanwala shot his way to a bronze medal at the Asian Shooting Championships 2026 in New Delhi on Wednesday. In the eight-man final at the Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range, Anish Bhanwala was in contention for the gold until the end. But a poor two-out-of-five round in the penultimate series saw him drop out of the race and settle for bronze with a score of 23.
This was Anish Bhanwala’s third individual continental medal in the 25m rapid fire pistol event. He won a bronze in 2023 and grabbed a silver in 2025. The Indian also won a silver at the World Championships last year in the discipline.
Japanese shooter Dai Yoshioka took the gold medal with a score of 31, while Kazakhstan’s Nikita Chiryukin won the silver with a total of 28. Adarsh Singh, the second Indian shooter to qualify for the final, finished sixth.
Earlier, Anish Bhanwala (574 – 16x) and Adarsh Singh (573 – 17x) had progressed to the medal round after finishing seventh and eighth, respectively, in the two-stage qualification round. Neeraj Kumar missed out after placing 16th with 561 – 9x.
The trio of Anish, Adarsh and Neeraj also secured the team silver for India in the event with a cumulative score of 1708-42x.
Bhavesh Shekhawat and Rajkanwar Singh Sandhu finished third and 10th in the qualifiers but both were shooting for Ranking Points Only (RPO).
Meanwhile, in the non-Olympic men’s 50m rifle prone event, India’s Babu Singh Panwar shot 621.3 to win a bronze medal. Islam Satpayev and Nikita Shakhtorin of Kazakhstan won the gold and silver, respectively.
Incidentally, it was India’s Sidharth Gaur who finished third in the standings with an Asian record score of 622.3 but the medal passed on to Panwar as Gaur was designated as a RPO shooter and wasn’t eligible for the podium.
Babu Singh Panwar, with Samarvir Singh and Tiwana Sartaj Singh, also guided India to the team silver in the event. The trio cumulatively scored 1853.9. Kazakhstan were the gold medallists with Vietnam taking silver.
Wednesday’s haul took India’s tally in senior events at the ongoing championships, which only features rifle and pistol events, up to 22 – eight gold, eight silver and six bronze.
