Beijing: India's 17-year-old teenager Divyansh Singh Panwar Friday secured the country's fourth Olympic quota place in shooting by winning a silver in the ISSF World Cup here.

Competing in only his second senior competition, Divyansh shot a total of 249.0 in the 10m air rifle event to finish a creditable second in the International Shooting Sport Federation World Cup for pistol and rifle shooters.

In fact, he missed out on the gold medal by just 0.4 points, which eventually went to China's Zicheng Hui, who shot 249.4. Grigorii Shamakov of Russia settled for bronze with a score of 227.5.

This is India's fourth 2020 Tokyo Olympic quota after Anjum Moudgil and Apurvi Chandela (10m air rifle women) and Saurabh Choudhary (10m Air Pistol men) had secured berths in the earlier World Cups and last year's World Championship.

Divyansh had qualified in third position for the final with a total score of 629.2. Among the other Indians in the fray, Ravi Kumar finished 44th with a score of 624.1 while Deepak Kumar was placed 57th with 622.6.

"Feeling really proud to have won quota for my country. I have gained in experience from this final. It was very tough with proven shooters, Olympians in fray," Divyansh said after winning the medal and quota.

On Thursday, Divyansh partnered with Anjum Moudgil to beat the formidable Chinese pair of Liu Ruxuan and Yang Haoran 17-15 in 10m air rifle mixed team event and win the gold.

This was India's third medal at the World Cup in China and they sit at the top of the medal tally. The duo of Manu Bhaker and Saurabh Chaudhary had on Thursday won gold in the 10m air pistol mixed team event.

Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.



Bharuch (Gujarat) (PTI): Four workers died on Sunday after inhaling toxic fumes following gas leakage at a chemical plant at Dahej in Gujarat's Bharuch district, police said.

The victims fell unconscious after inhaling the toxic fumes leaking from a pipe at a production unit of the Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited (GFL) at around 10 pm on Saturday, Dahej police station inspector BM Patidar said.

They were rushed to a private hospital in Bharuch. Three of them died at around 3 am on Sunday, while another one succumbed at 6 am, the official said.

"The incident occurred at around 10 pm when the four workers fell unconscious due to gas leakage from the pipe passing through the ground floor of the company's CMS plant. They were rushed to a private hospital where all four of them died," he said.

The bodies were sent for postmortem and further probe into the incident was underway, the official said.

The deceased have been identified as Rajesh Kumar (hailing from Gujarat), Mudrika Yadav (belonging to Jharkhand), Sushit Prasad and Mahesh Nandlal (both from Uttar Pradesh), police said.

GFL, Dahej, Deputy General Manager Jignesh Parmar told reporters that they will investigate the matter and a compensation of Rs 25 lakh would be paid to the kin of each of the deceased workers.

"The company and the management are saddened by the incident. We have promised to cooperate with legal authorities and we will investigate the matter and bring out our report," he said.

Sub Divisional Magistrate, Bharuch, Manisha Manani said three of the deceased were from other states.

"Four persons died due to gas leakage at the GFL plant near Ambeta village. The bodies have been sent to the civil hospital in Bharuch for post-mortem and an investigation is underway," Manani said.