Sports Minister to review weightlifting dope shame

NEW DELHI: With the ghost of doping returning to haunt Indian weightlifting, Sports Minister M S Gill has taken strong exception to the latest dope case involving Kavita Devi and has decided to call a review meeting to discuss the menace.

After weightlifters let down the nation at Athens Olympics and the Melbourne Commonwealth Games, Gill does not want to take any chances ahead of the Beijing Games, to be staged in August.
    
Kavita, a 75 kg weightlifter, was caught for using a banned substance in an out of competition test conducted by World Anti-Doping Agency officials in March but the Indian Weightlifting Federation disclosed it only a couple of days back.
    
Kavita's 'A' sample was found positive for banned steroid methadienone and she has refused to go for 'B' sample testing. She has been handed a two-year ban from participating in any national and international events besides imposing a fine of $ 2,000 which the Indian Federation will have to cough up if she did not pay.
    
It has been reliably learnt that Sports Minister's private secretary rang up Indian Weightlifting Federation office on Tuesday and sought the details of how Kavita, training at the Lucknow SAI Cetre's Centre of Excellence, returned positive.
    
"A personal assistant of the Sports Minister rang up the office today and sought the details of the dope test from the President (Harbhajan Singh)," a Ministry source said.
    
"The minister has decided to review the situation and a meeting will take place soon," he said.
    
When contacted Harbhajan said his office might have been contacted by the Ministry but he has not been contacted so far.
    
"My office may have been contacted, I have not been contacted (by Sports Minister) so far. We are writing to IWF that she (Kavita) has not agreed for 'B' sample testing.
    
"Once we do this she will be barred from taking part in any national and international event for two years besides paying $ 2,000 as fine (to International Federation)," he said from Lucknow.
    
IWF had been banned twice in the past -- in 2004 and 2006 -- for dope violations and another positive result during the year will see a third-time ban for the federation.
    
Kavita's sample was one among those a team of WADA officials had collected late last year and in March from lifters who were training at NIS Patiala for the Asian Championship in Japan.
    
Sources also say that Kavita will also be fined Rs. 25,000 by the Indian Federation.
    
"Her refusal to go for 'B' sample test meant she has virtually accepted her guilt and the WFI will also impose fine on him," the source added.
    
Kavita accompanied the Indian team for Japan but had to return home from there without taking part in the April 27-May 1 last Olympic qualifying event for Asia, from which Indian women booked one Olympic berth.
    
Kavita accompanied the Indian team for Kanazawa which left India on April 23 and by the time an e-mail from IWF reached the WFI office next day, she was in Japan but had to be told to return home.
    
Apparently, the drug used by Kavita is not available in India now and it is a mystery how the woman lifter had got the banned substance.
    
IWF's executive committee will discuss the matter at its meeting in Lucknow on Thursday besides choosing a new General Secretary, a post which has been lying vacant after Balbir Singh Bhatia resigned last month.