'No athlete will be sent to jail'

Even as the Sports Ministry is proposing a legislation to make doping a criminal offence, the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) Director General Navin Agarwal clarified on Wednesday that they did not intend to send any athlete to jail.

The Sports Minister Vijay Goel recently stated they were considering “whether athletes can be sent to jail by introducing a new legislation which will make doping a criminal offence.”

The proposed legislation is also aimed at punishing coaches and officials who are behind the supply of the prohibited substance to the athletes. A panel has been formed to draft the proposed legislation.

“That’s a wrong notion. We do not intend to send any athlete to jail. It’s just that we are in the process of framing a legislation to streamline the procedure and mechanism of dope control in the country. As of now it is only the athletes who get punished, but there are many other people in the system who could be responsible and in many cases they are responsible for the punishment meted out to the athlete but went scot-free. At times the athlete is a victim rather than a culprit,” Agarwal told Deccan Herald.

“So the legislation will provide for that and secondly things like nutritional supplements, many of them are laced with prohibited substances. There is no regulation as of now. There are various other issues which will be sorted through this legislation,” he said.

The legislation, however, could take about a year to be passed. “Well, it is a long procedure. But only some of the offences will be criminalised, whereby if somebody is targeting the innocent athletes. The idea is to protect the clean athlete, who doesn’t want to dope but due to his circumstances and without his knowledge he gets doped,” he said.

Agarwal also spoke firmly about the lack of transparency in the Board of Control for Cricket in India in following proper anti-doping processes. “As per the rules, NADA is the only authorised body in India to do dope testing as far as domestic events are concerned. With regards to any international events, the concerned international federations can set their own independent body. BCCI may be doing some dope testing but we don’t have any knowledge of that and we don’t have any control or supervision of that,” Agarwal said.

“The only difference is most other federations receive government funding for various activities of theirs whereas BCCI itself is a rich body and it doesn’t need government funding. But that doesn’t mean you flout the rules pertaining to doping which the ICC has already agreed to WADA.

“There is no transparency what the BCCI is doing. They may do their own testing, ban somebody or not ban somebody, it is not known.”

Agarwal also said NADA had doubled the number of samples being collected for testing. “We are now more focused, there is a risk assessment that we do and there is a smart testing procedure we have evolved whereby we are able to target those people and at those times where the athlete is likely to dope.