Suhas Lalinakere Yathiraj is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer who won silver at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics on Sunday. Currently, world no 3 in the SL 4 category, Yathiraj scripted history by becoming the first-ever IAS officer to win a medal at the Paralympics Games. He lost to top seed Lucas Mazur of France.

By winning a silver, the 38-year-old district magistrate of Gautam Buddh Nagar (Noida) will have scripted history as the first-ever IAS officer to win a medal at the Paralympics.

The 38-year-old district magistrate of Gautam Buddh Nagar (Noida) is a 2007-batch IAS officer with a leg impairment.

Suhas graduated as a computer engineer from NIT Karnataka with a distinction and has previously served as the district magistrate of Prayagraj, Agra, Azamgarh, Jaunpur, Sonbhadra districts.

For the last one and a half years, he had been at the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic management in Gautam Buddh Nagar since his appointment in the western UP district on March 30, 2020.

Prior to his departure to Tokyo in the last week of August, Suhas, when asked about his badminton practice and work as DM, had told reporters, “I practice from 10pm for two hours after all the day’s works are over. I have been managing my game and administrative duties this way for around six years now.”

Suhas said his professional journey started in 2016 while he was the DM of Azamgarh district in eastern UP and a badminton championship was organized there.

He was spotted by Gaurav Khanna, the current coach of the country’s para-badminton team, and push-started his professional journey.

In 2016 itself, he participated in the Asian Championship in Beijing and become the first non-ranked player to win the gold medal.

He went on to win medals at BWF Turkish championship in 2017 and 2019 besides the latest, a gold, in Brazil in 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic started ravaging India and world.