Melbourne: Indian weightlifters Tejinder Singh and Edwin Raju have reportedly tested positive for a banned drug at the 18th Commonwealth Games, according to highly placed sources in Indian contingent. Details are still awaited.
However, Manager of the Indian contingent, Gurbir Singh dismissed the reports. "We are not officially aware and are not in a position to comment. This is all speculative. If the person is found guilty the punishment can go up to suspension for life," Singh said.
Tejinder Singh did not turn up for competition in men's 85kg category on Monday, despite the Weightlifting Federation of India initially entering the lifter’s name.
Indian Olympic Association says they were 'puzzled and perplexed'.
"We are puzzled and perplexed about it. Because after WADA, SAI had tested the lifters on March 1. They were cleared to travel on March 8. We are puzzled what happened in the meanwhile," sources said.
The Organising committee had collected their samples and sent them to Sydney for tests.
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John Harnden, Chief Executive Officer for the Games, had earlier said that samples of all medal winners and some at random had been taken and sent to Sydney for tests.
"The tests are being done at the Australian Sports Drug Test Laboratory in Sydney and they will inform the Games Medical Commission, which in turn deal with the Athlete concerned," Harnden said.
According to sources at NIS Patiala, the WFI officials in Melbourne decided to withdraw Tejinder after finding out that he had tested positive.
However, no one is sure whether the positive test came in India or whether the lifter feared for the same at the CWG competition. Though two top WFI officials, president HS Dora and secretary-general Balbir Singh Bhatia, were present in Melbourne, no reasons were given for his withdrawal.
The Indian squad had two lifters in the 85kg category — Tejinder and Sateesha Rai.
Incidentally, Australian weightlifter Belinda Van Tienen, too, withdrew from the 69kg competition, ostensibly because she was injured.
Van Tienen is a central figure in the wide-ranging Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority’s drugs inquiry.
Edwin Raju (235), on the other hand, finished in the fourth place in the men's 56kg category, in which India's 25-year-old lifter Vicky Batta took the silver.
The scandal broke despite Indian Weightlifting Federation taking stringent measures to prevent any such incident by subjecting its lifters to a series of dope checks in which top medal prospects like P Shailaja in 75 kg and B Prameelavalli in 63 kg were filtered out and the team reached the Games village without the two girls.
Earlier, two other athletes had been excluded from India's Commonwealth Games squad after they failed to explain why they missed drugs tests last month.
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Asian Games medal-winning shot putter Navpreet Singh and sprinter Vishal Saxena were out of the team for the Games in Melbourne, because they failed to explain to a disciplinary panel why they were not at the national training camp when officials visited from the World Anti-Doping Agency.
The athletes were also banned from competing in domestic competitions. The athletes were barred from the national training camp until they can be cleared by a disciplinary panel.
The federation initially investigated 12 athletes who could not be located for testing when officials from the anti-doping agency visited the training centre in the northern city of Patiala in February.
The athletics federation cleared 10 of the 12 after the disciplinary panel expressed satisfaction with their explanations. Most of the exonerated athletes then made the Indian team.
The suspended athletes could be out for up to three months for leaving the camp without an excuse.
There could be other sanctions because athletes are obliged to inform administrators of their whereabouts for random and out-of-competition drug testing purposes.
India's 2002 Commonwealth Games gold medallist weightlifter Shailaja Pujari, too, was dropped from the squad for Melbourne after testing positive for a banned substance.
One of India's gold medal hopes, Pujari, 22, was seeking to defend her title in the 75-kg weight category, but failed an out-of-competition WADA test. Pujari was 'provisionally suspended' awaiting the result of her B-sample.
For the Indian lifters, it was the first major tournament after serving a one-year ban from all international competitions following a dope fiasco at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.
International Weightlifting Federation slapped the ban after Pratima Kumari and Sanamacha Chanu tested positive for testosterone and diuretic furosemide respectively at Athens and another lifter S Sunaina caught for doping offence at Asian championships in Kazakhstan earlier that year.
Indian lifters had also damaged the country's image at Manchester four years ago when Satheesha Rai and K Madaswamy failed the dope tests.
After the duo were stripped of their medals, India slipped down a rung to finish fouth in the last Games.
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