Can hundreds of doping cases that never saw the light of the day be re-opened after more than a decade of their detection?
The efforts of marathon runner Sunita Godara to expose such cases through a writ petition in the Delhi High Court had ended in a court order in 2009, directing the National Anti-Doping Disciplinary panel (NADDP) to take up the issue.
A panel, headed by Senior Advocate Sudhir Nandrajog, is now set to look into the matter from November 16. Godara has been summoned for the opening day's deliberations.
Godara had made a written presentation to the panel in August last, following which the NADDP Chairman, Dinesh Dayal, posted it for the Nandrajog panel to pursue. The original Godara petition, dealing with Arjuna Award and doping infringements, dates back to 1998; it got revised along the way and fresh petitions were filed in 2000 and 2001.
Initially, there was a claim that the Sports Authority of India (SAI) had submitted a list of 257 ‘positive' cases in two sealed envelopes to the court, of tests done between 1991 and 2000.
Later, Godara claimed that the SAI had submitted only 140 names. There is some doubt also about the period during which the said doping offences had reportedly occurred; was it since 1991 or 1994?
The list reportedly contains the names of almost all top athletes of the country in the 1990s.
Godara's later claims referred to a few hundred more ‘positive' cases having been added to the original list of 257 between 2001 and September, 2008, the time when the Delhi laboratory had gained accreditation from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
The Nandrajog panel has its task cut out. These doping cases involve issues that had never before come up for adjudication.
The panel will have to decide at the outset whether any of these cases can be pursued under the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) rules, the WADA Code, the Olympic Movement Anti-Doping Code (OMADC), which was the forerunner to the WADA Code, or any of the rules of the international federations concerned.
All rules demand that samples be tested only at WADA-accredited laboratories. (Prior to 2004, the IOC granted accreditations to laboratories).
Article 17 of the Code (statute of limitations) says action for an anti-doping rule violation has to commence within eight years from the alleged rule violation. That means cases prior to October, 2003, cannot be taken up if you go by the Code.
There is no account of the total number of positive cases having been dealt with by the concerned authorities, mostly National Federations.
Some of them were handled between 1991 and 2001 and a lot more between 2001 and 2008, and sanctions imposed.
The question about ‘leftovers' , especially those that were never “officially” reported to the federations or such cases where the federations might have been tardy, will also raise another question: Was the athlete given an opportunity to get the ‘B' sample tested in his/her presence?
Can a ‘B' sample be tested now, after more than three years, when the rules state that it should be done within seven days of notification of the ‘A' sample ‘positive'?
Are at least ‘B' samples still available with the laboratory? Do the federations have the code numbers and names of the athletes?
Godara wants those who helped ‘cover up' the doping mess brought to book. Her initial plea before the court was for the appointment of an enquiry panel to go into the cases that according to her were ‘hushed up' by conniving officials. The court's final order entrusting the responsibility to the NADDP gives the panel the authority to take any action it “deems fit and proper.”
The panel, however, is bound by the rules of the NADA. At best it can go back to the WADA Code or the OMADC since the NADA rules came into effect only from January 1, 2009.
