Indian race walker Bhawna Jat has been issued a 16-month ban by the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) on Friday due to whereabouts failures. The ban will be effective from the date of her initial suspension on August 10, 2023, until December 10, 2024, as reported by Olympics.com. The decision to suspend Bhawna under Article 2.4 of the NADA Rules was made by the Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel (ADDP) on July 10, 2024, but was only publicly disclosed on Thursday. Bhawna had been provisionally suspended by NADA in August of the previous year, preventing her from participating in the World Athletics Championships 2023 in Budapest, Hungary.
Every year, NADA selects a group of Indian athletes competing at the elite level of their respective sports to be part of the Registered Testing Pool (RTP), which is reviewed quarterly. Athletes in the RTP are required to regularly update their whereabouts, including details such as their accommodation address, training locations, work commitments, competition schedules, and other relevant information. Failure to comply with these requirements is considered a filing failure.
Furthermore, athletes in the RTP must provide NADA with a 60-minute time slot for testing, and failing to do so may result in a missed test, according to Olympics.com.
Bhawna, a 28-year-old athlete who represented India at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and previously held the national record in the women's 20km race walk, missed two doping tests in May and June 2023. She was also cited for a filing failure in the last quarter of 2022.
Bhawna explained that the filing failure was due to technical difficulties she encountered while using the mobile application to submit the required information. She also mentioned that losing her phone further complicated the situation.
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