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Wrestling federation chief says CBI to probe Narsingh’s case
NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will probe the doping scandal involving wrestler Narsingh Pancham Yadav.
NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will probe the doping scandal involving wrestler Narsingh Pancham Yadav.
Narsingh was banned for four years after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upheld the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) appeal against his exoneration by the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA).
The development comes after a brief meeting between Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh and the Prime Minister’s Office on August 28.
Both Narsingh and the WFI had requested for a CBI probe in the matter after the ban.
“He has made an allegation that he was a victim of foul play. Now the CBI will probe this allegation. I hope the truth comes out,” said Brij Bhushan.
“I had said previously and I’ll repeat this today (Friday). If the wrestler himself is guilty then he should be punished, but if someone played dirty with him then he should be held accountable,” he added.
After claiming that someone contaminated his food, Narsingh alleged his food supplement was contaminated and finally claimed that his amino drink was laced at the Sports Authority of India’s (SAI) training centre in Sonepat.
CAS’s ad-hoc division in its report said that the wrestler had failed to establish the “balance of probabilities’ that the anti-doping rule violation was not intentional.
“…the panel noted in the closing remarks that the athlete’s counsel submitted that he may have been subject to further sabotage, but all in all found the sabotage (s) theory possible, but not probable and certainly not grounded in real evidence.
The panel therefore determined that the athlete had failed to satisfy his burden of proof and the panel was satisfied that the most likely explanation was that the athlete simply and intentionally ingested the prohibited substance in tablet form on more than one occasion,” the order read.
The wrestler was cleared by the three-member disciplinary panel of NADA on August 2 as it felt the ingestion of the substance appeared to be a one-time incident. “…the panel concludes that the athlete deserves the benefit of Article 10.4 of the anti-doping rules of NADA 2015. There is no fault and negligence on his part, and he is a victim of sabotage done by a competitor.”
