She would have been the perfect Paralympic ambassador for India – proof that a disability isn't a one-way ticket to a life begging at traffic lights or being shut up at home. The businesswoman and mother captivated the nation not known for its compassion for the disabled after she annihilated a bunch of able-bodied reality TV show contestants in a swimming race despite being paralysed from the chest down.
But Deepa Malik will not be competing in London – in the pool or on the athletics field, where she has been the Asian champion in shot put, discus and javelin. Despite her track record, she was not selected to be part of the 10-man squad. Emphasis is on the "man": this year, as in every single Paralympic Games that India has contested since 1968, there is not one woman in the team.
"It was a disappointment," admitted Malik, 41, of discovering that despite having regularly thrown beyond the qualifying distance for the B level of the F53 category in the javelin, her best sport, she had not made the cut. "For the last two years I've had my life on hold for the Paralympics."
She had already closed down her successful catering and restaurant business in order to concentrate on the 2010 Commonwealth Games, where she managed a sixth in the shot put. But, she said, "It's more about the journey than the destination" – and anyway, there's always Rio 2016.
David Premanath, a chief coach for the Paralympic Committee of India, said there was no conspiracy to keep out Malik or other female athletes. The fact was, he said, India received just 10 places from the London organising committee and was obliged to choose its 10 most promising athletes. "Even if 20 athletes qualify, we have to select the top 10 based on international rankings," he said. "In sports, there is no such distinction as men and women."
The fact that India – a country of 1.2 billion people – has just 10 places, none of them taken by women, shows how little support there is for the disabled, said Seema Baquer. She is the associate director of the Disability Rights Initiative at Delhi's Human Rights Law Network, which estimates that 70 million disabled Indians are "treated as second-class citizens and are forced to confront segregation, discrimination, barriers and stereotypes".
She said: "We find that the biggest problem is a general lack of awareness among families and communities about the capabilities and potential of people with disabilities. That support system – which realises that there's a still a lot they can achieve – is severely lacking. And even more so with women."
Women with disabilities were a "minority within a minority", she said. "There are a lot of barriers to the idea that disabled women can actually play sports."
Malik is uniquely well placed to change attitudes to disability in India after two barnstorming appearances on MTV's Roadies, a top-rated reality show which follows contestants on a road trip, completing challenges along the way. In 2007 she was shown on her specially adapted motorbike; earlier this year she was invited back on the programme, challenging contestants to a swimming race. Despite her opponents being allowed to wear life jackets, and Malik unable to use her legs, she wiped the floor with the lot of them.
Then there are the three records she holds in Limca, India's answer to the Guinness World Records: most notably swimming against the current for 1km in the notoriously filthy and dangerous Yamuna river, and becoming the first woman with her level of disability to ride her motorbike across nine high altitude passes in nine days from Leh to Ladakh in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Malik said there had been "tremendous change" in the 13 years since she became disabled after three spinal tumour surgeries.
There were now lifts for wheelchair users on the Delhi metro, for example, and new buildings had to be accessible since India signed the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities in 2007. But, she said, a huge social stigma remained: "There is still this pervasive religious view that if you are disabled, you have been cursed by the gods."
