Gold winner Mariyappan to pay off loan with cash award
High jumper Mariyappan Thangavelu, India’s first gold winner at the Rio Paralympics, will pay off his 16-year-old ₹3 lakh medical loan using the ₹2.75 crore cash rewards that have been announced for him. The 21-year-old's mother, a vegetable seller, took the loan to fund Mariyappan’s treatment after his right leg was crushed in an accident at the age of five.