Geeta Phogat: Age, Husband, Son, DSP Job and Net Worth

Who Is Geeta Phogat? A Quick Introduction:

Before Geeta, no Indian woman had won a wrestling gold at the Commonwealth Games, and none had wrestled at the Olympics. She did both in the space of two years. That is the short version of why Geeta Phogat matters, and why a Bollywood film about her family went on to become one of the most-watched Indian films ever made.

She is the eldest daughter of wrestler and coach Mahavir Singh Phogat, who trained her in a village where girls were not supposed to wrestle at all. Her sisters Babita, Ritu and Sangeeta followed her onto the mat, and so did her cousins Priyanka and Vinesh Phogat.

Off the mat she holds the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police in Haryana, took on Rohit Shetty’s stunt show on TV, and became a mother in 2019. This page goes through her whole life, from the mud pit in Balali to the money she earned in the Pro Wrestling League.

Geeta’s Profile in One Place:

Here are the basics, laid out so you can find what you came for quickly.

Full name	Geeta Phogat
What is she known for?	India’s first women’s wrestling gold at the Commonwealth Games
Date of birth	15 December 1988, a Thursday
How old is she?	37
Where is she from?	Balali village, now in Charkhi Dadri district, Haryana
Parents	Mahavir Singh Phogat and Daya Kaur
Her coach growing up	Her father, later a Dronacharya awardee
Who is her husband?	Wrestler Pawan Kumar Saroha, married since November 2016
Does she have children?	One son, Arjun, born in December 2019
Her day job	Deputy Superintendent of Police, Haryana Police
Olympics	London 2012, women’s freestyle 55 kg
Big national honour	Arjuna Award, 2012
Religion	Hindu

Geeta Phogat Age and Birthday:

She was born on 15 December 1988 in Balali, which makes her 37. The figures below are worked out live from her birth date, so the page stays correct after every birthday.

She is the oldest of the wrestling Phogat girls. Babita is about a year younger, and Vinesh nearly six years younger. Here is a neat coincidence: Geeta and Vinesh were both born on a Thursday.

Height, Weight and Body Stats:

No wrestling body or Olympic profile publishes her height, so treat the figure below as a close estimate. Her weight classes, though, are fully on record.

How tall is she?	Around five foot three, roughly 1.60 m
Her best weight class	55 kg, where she won Commonwealth gold and wrestled at London 2012
Weight in later years	Between 58 and 62 kg
Hair	Black, kept short for most of her career
Eyes	Dark brown

Like her cousin, she has moved around the weight classes a fair bit. Watch how the number on the scale climbed over her career:

Weight classes in kilograms. The highlighted bar is the class she made her name in.

Her Family: Parents, Sisters and Cousins:

Her father Mahavir Singh Phogat was a wrestler himself and decided, against the wishes of most of Balali, that his daughters would wrestle too. Her mother, Daya Kaur, ran the house while the girls trained. Geeta has said that without her father’s stubbornness she would simply have been married off young, like most of the girls she grew up with.

The family tree below sorts out who is a sister and who is a cousin, which trips up a lot of people.

Are Geeta and Vinesh Phogat Sisters? How They Are Related:

Not quite. They are first cousins, though they grew up almost like sisters. Vinesh’s father, Rajpal, was Mahavir’s younger brother. After Rajpal was killed in a family dispute when Vinesh was a small girl, Mahavir raised Vinesh and her sister Priyanka alongside his own four daughters, and trained all six in the same akhada.

That is why you will often hear all of them called the Phogat sisters. If you are wondering how the two compare as wrestlers, here they are side by side.

	Geeta	Vinesh
Born	15 Dec 1988	25 Aug 1994
Father	Mahavir Singh Phogat	Rajpal Phogat
Olympic Games	One, London 2012	Three, ending in the Paris 2024 final
Commonwealth golds	One, Delhi 2010	Three, 2014 to 2022
World medals	Bronze in 2012	Bronze in 2019 and 2022
Life away from the mat	DSP in Haryana Police	Congress MLA from Julana
In Dangal?	Yes, a central character	No

Growing Up in the Balali Akhada:

Her first training ground was an open patch of earth next to a cattle shed. There was no roof and no mat. She sparred with village boys in mud bouts, and the Phogat girls soon had a reputation as the sisters who beat all the boys.

Mahavir was ruthless about the schedule. Her mother has recalled Geeta crying through early sessions and being punished for turning up even a minute late. Long hair and girlish clothes were off the table, and the tracksuits drew comments from neighbours who thought women should be in salwar kameez. Villagers told the family nobody would marry girls with wrestlers’ ears.

Her grandmother had wanted a grandson. Years later, she reportedly said she would happily take a hundred granddaughters like Geeta.

The 2010 Gold That Changed Indian Wrestling:

Her first big title came at the 2009 Commonwealth Wrestling Championships in Jalandhar. The real breakthrough was a year later at the Delhi Commonwealth Games. Wrestling at 55 kg in front of a home crowd, she beat Australia’s Emily Bensted 3 to 0 and 7 to 0 in the final.

That made her the first Indian woman ever to win a Commonwealth Games gold in wrestling. Babita won silver at 51 kg at the same Games, so both sisters came home with medals. She later said the semi-final against a Nigerian opponent was the hardest bout, and once that was done she felt sure of gold.

London 2012: The First Indian Woman Wrestler at the Olympics:

She booked her ticket to London by winning the Asian Olympic qualifying tournament in Almaty in 2012. No Indian woman wrestler had qualified for the Games before.

In London she lost a tight bout to Canada’s Tonya Verbeek, an experienced Olympic medallist, and her medal hopes ended there. She was frank about it afterwards, saying she had been overcautious and could have won a medal if she had just done the basics right.

The same year she won bronze at the World Championships in Strathcona County, Canada, and bronze at the Asian Championships in Gumi, South Korea. In August 2012 President Pranab Mukherjee presented her with the Arjuna Award at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Her firsts:

Injuries and the Missed Rio Olympics:

A torn knee ligament in early 2014 needed surgery and kept her out for more than a year, so she missed the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. She came back to take bronze at the 2015 Asian Championships in Doha.

The road to Rio 2016 went wrong at the Asian qualifier in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Wrestling at 53 kg, she did not turn up for her repechage bout, which was recorded as an injury default. The federation sent her a show-cause notice, and she missed out on Rio. Babita and Vinesh both made it, and Sakshi Malik won bronze there.

Comeback Bouts After Motherhood:

She returned to the mat after her son was born. At the 2021 senior national championships in Gonda, wrestling at 59 kg, she cruised to the final before losing to World medallist Sarita Mor, finishing with silver. She has also entered selection trials at 62 kg, though she admitted beforehand that she was not yet in the shape she wanted.

Her Medals, Year by Year:

This is her senior international record at the major events, plus the national titles worth knowing about.

Dangal, Reel Versus Real: What the Film Changed:

Aamir Khan’s Dangal came out in December 2016, a month after her wedding. Fatima Sana Shaikh played the adult Geeta and Zaira Wasim played her as a girl, with Aamir as Mahavir. The film is faithful to the spirit of her story, but plenty was changed for the screen.

Aamir and the Dangal team came to Balali for her wedding, along with Sakshi Malik.

Husband Pawan Kumar Saroha and Son Arjun:

Pawan Kumar Saroha is a freestyle wrestler too, competing at 86 kg, and a Commonwealth Games bronze medallist from 2014. The two knew each other for years from national camps and domestic tournaments before they started seeing each other. He is about five years younger than her.

They married on Sunday, 20 November 2016, in Balali. In May 2023 he was by her side when Delhi Police stopped them at the Singhu border as they tried to join the wrestlers protesting at Jantar Mantar, a moment she announced herself on X.

Their son was born on 24 December 2019. A few weeks later she shared his name on Instagram: Arjun. She calls him Aajuun and Mickey in her birthday posts, and photos of him in the family akhada turn up on her feed now and then.

Geeta Phogat in Haryana Police:

Her police career began with a fight. After the 2010 gold, Haryana offered her an Inspector’s post under the sports quota. Male Commonwealth medallists such as boxer Vikas Krishan had been made DSPs, so she went to the Punjab and Haryana High Court arguing her achievement deserved the same rank.

It took six years. In October 2016 the Haryana cabinet approved her appointment as a Deputy Superintendent of Police, a gazetted officer’s post. She marked her return to competition in October 2017 by winning gold at the All India Police Championship.

Pro Wrestling League Earnings:

When the Pro Wrestling League launched with its first auction in late 2015, she was one of its icon players. The figures below come from that auction and the next one.

Which season?	What happened at the auction
Season 1, auction in 2015	Bought by the Punjab franchise for Rs 33 lakh, her base price, as their 58 kg icon
Season 2, auction in 2016	Picked by Uttar Pradesh along with Babita; the Phogat sisters fetched over Rs 70 lakh between them that day

For context, cousin Vinesh went to Delhi for Rs 29.7 lakh in that first auction, and Babita went to Uttar Pradesh for Rs 34.1 lakh. For a few weeks of bouts that was serious money for Indian women wrestlers at the time.

Television: Khatron Ke Khiladi 8:

She made her TV debut in 2017 on Colors’ Fear Factor: Khatron Ke Khiladi 8, hosted by Rohit Shetty and shot in Spain. Reports at the time said she was the best-paid contestant in a cast that included Hina Khan, Nia Sharma and Ravi Dubey.

Geeta Phogat Net Worth:

Unlike Vinesh, she has never stood for election, so there is no sworn affidavit to read. The estimate is pieced together from what is on record about each income stream.

She keeps her finances private, so the range stays wide on purpose. What is certain is that her money came from wrestling and what wrestling opened up, not from family wealth: the akhada where it started had no roof.

Geeta Phogat Zodiac Sign and Kundli Basics:

A 15 December birthday makes her a Sagittarius in Western astrology. Her birth time is not public, so the rising sign is unknown, but the date alone tells us a good deal.

Astrology fans will enjoy the life path 8 for a woman who ended up a police officer. Sagittarians are famous for taking risks, and she signed up for a TV show where the job was jumping off things in Spain.

Education and Religion:

Her schooling in Haryana ran alongside full-time training under her father, so the akhada took most of her waking hours. She follows Hinduism and grew up inside the old village wrestling culture of rural Haryana, where the akhada was traditionally a place for men only.

Where to Find Her Online:

These are her own accounts. Watch out for fan pages using near-identical names.

Platform	Her handle
Instagram	@geetaphogat
X (Twitter)	@geeta_phogat

Things Even Fans Often Miss:

• In the official London 2012 results she is listed by her first name alone, simply as Geeta.
• She credits Sushil Kumar’s Beijing 2008 bronze with getting India interested in wrestling, which helped the girls who came after.
• Dangal released just a month after her wedding, so her first weeks of married life came with a nationwide film release about her.
• Her 2010 final was not close at all: she won it 3 to 0 and 7 to 0.
• Her husband admits he only fully understood what she had achieved after watching Dangal.
• Her sister Sangeeta is married to Bajrang Punia, who protested alongside Vinesh in 2023.
• She has called herself a relaxed wrestler who never worries about who is standing across the mat.
• She now spends a lot of time cheering on the next generation, and has said publicly that Indian wrestlers will win more Olympic medals.

Final Take:

Medal tables do not tell the whole story of Geeta Phogat. Vinesh won more and Babita won often, but Geeta went first, and going first in a village that mocked the whole idea is the hard part. The 2010 gold and the London ticket proved to an entire country that its daughters could wrestle at the top level. Everything that followed, from Dangal’s box office to every Indian girl who has since stepped onto a wrestling mat, traces back to the girl sparring with boys beside a cattle shed in Balali.