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Shooting

"She always dreamt of the Olympics," says coach of the teenage shooter who died by suicide

17-year-old shooter Khush Seerat Kaur Sandhu died by suicide because she was unhappy with her performance at the National Shooting Championships. Her coach says her dreams of Olympics remain unfulfilled.

Khush Seerat Kaur Sandhu had won 11 medals at the 2019 Nationals Tournament (Source: Gurdit Singh Sekhon/Twitter)
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Khush Seerat Kaur Sandhu had won 11 medals at the 2019 Nationals Tournament (Source: Gurdit Singh Sekhon/Twitter)

Gurdit Singh Sekhon

Gurdit Singh Sekhon

By

Md Imtiaz

Updated: 10 Dec 2021 4:43 PM GMT

Unlike physical illness, depression could be a lot harder to understand. Anything, from bad grades at academics, losing a job, relationships, arguments, could trigger the feeling of sadness, and sometimes it doesn't even need a trigger at all. Every day, the topic of mental health is gaining importance, and so is the necessity to break the stigma around it. Reports of high rates of suicide among teenagers in India are not new to us, and somewhere we still fail to address this concern.

On Friday, Indian sports media outlets woke up to another such horrific news of teenage suicide after a 17-year-old international-level
shooter
shot herself to death with her licensed pistol inside her residence in Punjab, Faridkot. It was learned that the teen, Khush Seerat Kaur Sandhu, died by suicide because she was unhappy with her performance at the 64th National Shooting Championships that concluded last week. Sandhu, though, did not win any medal in the individual category at the Nationals in Delhi, she had won a team medal in the junior civilian women team event.
The incident took place when she was studying on the ground floor, where her grandmother was sleeping. Her parents were asleep, and they discovered only in the morning.
"Nobody had guessed this would be happening. My room was next to her room when we participated in the Nationals tournament. She said she was unhappy with the result, but she was expecting good results in the future. Even her parents did not know what was going inside her mind," says an emotional Sukhraj Kaur, who is the of Faridkot shooting district academy.
Sandhu harbored the dream of taking part in the Olympics and winning medals for her country at the biggest stage in the world. But unable to qualify in the Tokyo Games, followed by unexpected results in the Nationals, probably had broken her down, suggests Kaur. In 2019, Sandhu won 11 medals in individual and team events in the 25m Pistol and 10m Air Pistol events at the Nationals. Apart from winning the gold medal in the 25m junior pistol women civilian category, Sandhu had also bagged the gold medal in the 10m Air Pistol sub-youth women category.
"Shooting is a mind game after all, and she seemed to have bogged down with the results this year. She had probably not expected of not winning an individual medal this year. I remember she always wanted to be at the Olympics. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, there have been many instances of mental breakdown among students who couldn't perform in their sports because of pressure. We had our sports psychologists counseling our students. But I don't know what led Sandhu to consider these results as her ultimate," says Kaur.
The youngster had started her career as a swimmer and won medals at the national level; she graduated to shooting four years ago at Faridkot.


She finished in an impressive fifth place in the 25m pistol junior women final, where 2018 CWG champion Manu Bhaker won the title. Apart from that, Sandhu helped the Punjab team claim seven medals in different categories in the team events. Earlier this year, Sandhu had also competed in the ISSF Junior Shooting Championships in Lima, Peru.
Sandhu was training under 2014 Commonwealth Games silver medallist shooter Gurpal Singh in Bhatinda at the Karam Shooting Range in Bhatinda. In 2018, Singh took Sandhu under his aegis and for the last four months, she has been staying in Bhatinda to train with him for the Nationals tournament. "She was a good student and was quite jolly in nature. Nobody could assume she would be taking such a drastic step. I was very satisfied with her progress in just three years. She was also a brilliant student," says Singh.
The Nationals competition ended on December 6. Though she didn't get an expected result in the competition, Sandhu was eventually looking forward to the trials that were supposed to be held in January. "After the Nationals, she told me she will be coming back with better preparation for the India team trials," Singh adds.
Sandhu was expected to be a future star of Indian shooting and could have been a good prospect for the 2024 Paris Olympics. "I wish I could tell her to enjoy the sports more instead of getting pressured by it. I went to attend the last rites and spoke to her parents in detail and I do not she was pressurized by anyone."
But this should serve as a warning bell, believes Singh, who says, "If a students approach us for any kind of counseling or any sort of help, we will proactively be helping them. Sandhu did not speak about what was going on inside her mind. We could have helped her and prevented this from happening," concludes the coach.
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