The growing number of dope offences in the country can be curbed only by bringing a legislation to criminalise doping, said Adille Sumariwalla, Athletics Federation of India (AFI) president, on Friday. Sumariwalla's comments have come after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) released its 2022 report that puts India on top of the list of dope positive cases in the world. India's National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) tested 3865 samples between January 1-December 31, 2022 out of which 125 — or 3.2% — returned positive.

"It is sad to see India sitting on top of this list. You can't say doping is not rampant in India, but you also need to acknowledge that we are testing more than ever. The more we test, the more cheats we will catch," Sumariwalla said.

"Unless we criminalise doping, this rot will not stop. We conduct enough seminars and awareness programmes, the testing has gone up significantly over the past few years, but the number of dopers continues to be significant. Once we start sending offending coaches to prison, the numbers will come down," he added.

In 2022, the union government passed National Anti-Doping Bill and among the stated objectives of the legislation was to provide legal sanctity to NADA and NDTL. Drug cheats, however, are still not liable to penal action. AFI also has a whistleblower policy where athletes reporting of any doping are monetarily rewarded.

"All these measures help, but ultimately, we need provisions under the Indian Penal Code to punish dopers. Our focus areas, as far as anti-doping goes, include state and district-level competitions. We want to send NADA teams to Inter-Services and School Games, but even NADA is facing a resource crunch."

Athletics was the most tested sport in India with 998 samples being examined at NDTL, out of which 47 or 4.6%, returned an Adverse Analytical Findings' (AAF) result. The next most tested sport was weightlifting (477 samples) out of which 17 were deemed AAF. In wrestling, 285 samples produced 18 AAFs. India won medals in these sports at the Tokyo Olympics.

"The fact that our medal-winning sports are throwing up AAFs is alarming, but these are also among the most tested disciplines. It is easy to go after athletics but one must also consider the number of events we organise and the kind of testing we do," Sumariwalla said.

Over the last three years, AFI conducted about 75 anti-doping seminars for athletes of all levels. The inter-district meets, Sumariwalla informed, are preceded by awareness sessions for athletes. "We distributed over 1000 booklets at the last inter-district and urged the athletes to refer to it diligently. Beyond this, athletes also need to assess how they want to play the sport," he said.

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