Inderjeet suspended for four years

Vinayak Padmadeo

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 4

One of the longest running doping sagas came to an end on Wednesday with the Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel (ADDP) of the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) suspending Haryana shot-putter Inderjeet Singh for four years. The disciplinary panel felt Inderjeet’s lawyer Anish Dayal failed to establish that the anomalies in the process of sample collection resulted in an adverse analytical finding for the athlete. It is understood that Inderjeet will file an appeal against the judgment. “We will study the order and then issue a statement,” said a source close to the athlete.

Inderjeet was served with the adverse analytical finding (AAF) notice on July 25, 2016, after exogenous anabolic steroid was detected in his sample, collected in an out-of-competition test on June 22, 2016. Following the AAF notice, the shot-putter was axed from the 2016 Rio Olympics squad. Inderjeet had claimed that he was a victim of some conspiracy.

Procedural lapse 

Dayal had argued that the procedures of international standards were not met in Inderjeet’s case. The absence of partial collection kit, doping control officer’s (DCO) statement that the sample was transported in public transport for four hours during peak summer, his claim that he kept the sample at his home and delivered it the next day at NADA office instead of the National Dope Testing Laboratory were some of the deviations pointed out by Dayal.

However, he failed to establish that these violations resulted in Inderjeet's adverse analytical finding. “…the issue remains whether these deviations have vitiated the entire testing procedure and, consequently, should culminate in annulling the test results. We are not in agreement with this proposition. Despite their best efforts, the athlete's experts have not been able to persuade us that these evident departures from international standards have actually resulted in AAF,” the report reads.

“We hold that while there have been serious departures from WADA guidelines, however, the athlete has failed to conclusively establish that these deviations had a direct nexus or did in fact result in an AAF. Consequently, we uphold the violation of article 2.1 resulting in ineligibility of the athlete for a period of 4 years commencing from the date of his provisional suspension.”