With three days left for the Budapest world athletics championships to start, woman race walker Bhawna Jat was withdrawn from the Indian contingent by the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) on Wednesday for an anti-doping rule violation related to “whereabouts failure” notified by the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA).
It was learnt that Bhawna, who competed in the Tokyo Olympics, has been provisionally suspended by NADA. “She was in Budapest with the team but was sent back to India by the federation on Wednesday following a NADA missive on her whereabouts failure,” an official aware of the development said.
A combination of three “filing failure” or a “missed test” within a 12-month period constitutes a “whereabouts failure” and an anti-doping rule violation. An athlete is required to update every quarter accurate information on their whereabouts (called whereabout filing) for one hour daily so that they can be located for out-of-competition testing.
NADA sent her a notice of provisional suspension on August 10 to which she sought a stay. An urgent hearing was held by a panel under the chairmanship of Sunny Choudhary which dismissed the plea, concluding that there was not enough reason to warrant a stay. Bhawna missed two doping tests in May and June and was reported for one filing failure in the last quarter of 2022.
One of India’s top race walkers, Bhawna won gold at the Inter-State championships last month, clocking 1hr 37min 3 secs. Her personal best in 20km race walk (1:29:44) came this year at the Indian Race-Walking Championships in Ranchi. She is also part of the Asian Games squad but is unlikely to be remain in it. She had been the only women race walker for Budapest after the other 20km walker Priyanka Goswami pulled out saying she wants to focus on the Hangzhou Asian Games.
{{/usCountry}}One of India’s top race walkers, Bhawna won gold at the Inter-State championships last month, clocking 1hr 37min 3 secs. Her personal best in 20km race walk (1:29:44) came this year at the Indian Race-Walking Championships in Ranchi. She is also part of the Asian Games squad but is unlikely to be remain in it. She had been the only women race walker for Budapest after the other 20km walker Priyanka Goswami pulled out saying she wants to focus on the Hangzhou Asian Games.
{{/usCountry}}Only last month, three Indian athletes -- shot-putter Karanveer Singh and sprinters Archana Suseendran and Anjali Devi had tested positive – were withdrawn from the Asian Championships squad due to doping violations.
A recent investigation report by the World Anti-Doping Agency on NADA had said NADA did not have “satisfactory oversight and management of whereabouts filings by athletes in the registered testing pool.” It noted that the supervision of “whereabouts” by NADA was inadequate.
The investigation launched in 2018 monitored select sports and athletes within India. Of the 131 athletes in NADA's Registered Testing Pool (RTP May 2023), it had discovered and recorded 97 whereabouts failures against 70 athletes.