India's two CWG-bound para-athletes fail dope test

Commonwealth Games (CWG) and the Indian contingent has been rocked by another doping episode. TOI has learnt that two of the CWG-bound para athletes have failed the drug test for banned substances in an out-of-competition testing by the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) officials in Pune and Delhi, respectively.

Both have been handed provisional suspension and have been dropped from the 30-member para squad for the Games. On Wednesday, two of the country’s leading women athletes – 100m and 4x100m specialist Dhanalakshmi Sekar and triple jumper Aishwarya Babu – had returned positive for dope and were excluded from the 36-member athletics contingent.

In the recent case, Armyman Aneesh Kumar Surendran Pillai, who competes in the men’s shot put IF1 category, and woman para powerlifter Geeta from Haryana failed the dope test after traces of prohibited drugs were found in their urine samples. While Aneesh’s sample was collected from his training base in Pune, Geeta was tested at the Jawaharlal Nehru (JLN) stadium here during a preparatory camp for the Pyeongtaek World Para Powerlifting Asia-Oceania Open Championships in South Korea, held in June.

The news came at a time when the first batch of sixmember para table tennis squad, which included Bhavina Patel, the first Indian TT player to secure a medal at the Paralympics in Tokyo, and Sonal Patel, left for Birmingham late Saturday night. According to sources, Aneesh, who had bagged gold at the World Military Games in October 2019, returned positive for a masking agent after failing to submit a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) certificate for medicines consumed to treat his blood pressure (BP).

In the case of Geeta, her sample revealed the presence of an anabolic steroid. She