Dope cheats have no fear when they return after suspension, says Anju

Nirmala Sheoran banned for doping, Jisna Mathew upgraded to silver, Anju Bobby George calls for stricter testing in athletics.

Five years ago, Asian champion quartermiler Nirmala Sheoran was punished with a four-year ban for failing a dope test and her results from August 2016 to November 2018 were disqualified. That meant that Nirmala would lose the 400m gold which she won at the 2017 Bhubaneswar Asian Championships and Jisna Mathew, who had finished third in that final, should have received a silver medal.

“I have not got the silver medal yet. But after we wrote to the Athletics Federation of India, we got a letter saying that I have been upgraded from bronze to silver,” said Jisna.

The Odisha Government had also presented Rs 10 lakh to the gold medal winners, Rs 7.5 lakh for silver and Rs 5 lakh for bronze at the 2017 Asians held in that State but Jisna has not heard anything about the prize-money which she was supposed to have got for the silver.

Nirmala, from Haryana, returned to national competition at last year’s Inter-State meet, and last month was handed an eight-year ban for a second doping violation which happened last year.

Around the same time, news came in that hammer thrower K.M. Rachna had been banned for 12 years for a second doping offence.

As the Indian track and field season begins in this Paris Olympics year with the 400m Indian Open in Thiruvananthapuram on March 18, a big question keeps popping up... are cheats getting more confident?

“Once they commit a crime, it looks like they have no fear when they do it a second time. Once they are caught, they have to undergo multiple tests before being cleared to compete. So they probably think since they have undergone so many tests, nobody will come to test them again,” said Anju Bobby George, the country’s lone female World Championships medallist, in a chat with The Hindu.