New Delhi, July 28: The suspense over wrestler Narsingh Yadav’s Olympic participation was today prolonged further after the National Anti-Doping Agency deferred its final verdict on the doping scandal surrounding him to Saturday or Monday at the end of a two-day hearing here.
A day after Narsingh and his lawyers presented their case on the failed dope test, which, according to them, was a conspiracy against the grappler, NADA’s legal team gave its arguments against the sabotage theory before the disciplinary committee.
“Hearing has been concluded today. The judgment will come out either on Saturday or Monday,” NADA’s lawyer Gaurang Kanth told reporters at the end of the hearing today.“The argument put forth by NADA is that he’s not eligible for remission which he has been asking for because he has failed to establish that he did not commit any fault or negligence. And since he has not been able to establish how the banned substance had entered his body, we argued that he should be given punishment,” he said.
“Narsingh did not produce the relevant circumstantial evidence that there could have been sabotage as had been claimed by them. They filed an affidavit that his drinks or water was spiked but they did not produce the evidence to prove it to satisfy NADA or WADA Code,” he argued.
The wrestler, who has alleged the involvement of fellow grapplers in the conspiracy, has already been replaced by Parveen Rana in the Olympic bound squad but will be reinstated if he gets a favourable verdict from NADA.
NADA’s lawyer, however, today said that Narsingh’s claims of conspiracy or sabotage are not backed by sufficient proof.
“The argument advanced by them is that they are eligible for remission under 10.4 of WADA Code. But the argument put forth by NADA is that he is not eligible for remission because they have to show that he has no fault and negligence as far as contamination is concerned and they have to lead evidence to the extent that all these have been done without his knowledge and he has no clue how the substance detected had entered into his body,” Kanth said.
Rule 10.4 in WADA’s 2016 Code says that ‘If an athlete or other person establishes in an individual case that he or she bears no fault or negligence, then the otherwise applicable period of ineligibility shall be eliminated. They will only apply in exceptional circumstances, for example, where an athlete could prove that, despite all due care, he or she was sabotaged by a competitor.’
“We argued that the requirements of due diligence and care which was needed to escape from punishment was not provided as to satisfy the WADA Code. So we said he should be given punishment as appropriate this panel thinks fit. We said as an international athlete he should have taken due care about his food and drinks. But from what he had produced before the panel there was nothing to prove due care on his part,” Kanth said
Narsingh’s hopes of competing in the Olympics had faded further after the wrestler failed a second dope test which was conducted on him on July 5.
Narsingh filed an FIR at the Sonepat Police Station naming two fellow wrestlers, one of them a 17-year-old, and persisted with his demand for a CBI probe into the scandal that has sent shockwaves into the Indian sporting fraternity.
The Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) has backed Narsingh.
Sports Minister Vijay Goel, on the other hand, has stuck to his stand that the government will abide by international rules when it comes to deciding on Narsingh’s trip to Rio in the aftermath of the controversy.
Narsingh had been picked ahead of two-time Olympic medallist Sushil Kumar after he won the quota place with a bronze medal in the World Championships.
