A National Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel (ADDP) compounded Parvej Khan’s two Anti-Doping Rule Violations and sanctioned him a six-year ineligibility period. The ADDP, chaired by Charu Pragya and including Dr Bikash Mehdi and Archana Surve, banned the 20-year-old after he tested positive for EPO and had three Whereabouts Failures inside 12 months.
It is a matter of great concern that National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) took more than 11 months after the third Whereabouts failure occurred on December 5, 2023 to have the administrative review report ready on October 25 and decide to record a missed test only on November 11 and issue him the notification only on November 27.
Firstly, NADA delayed notifying the athlete of the third Whereabouts Failure until April 4, 2024. The only plausible explanation for the wait of four months is that NADA may have been inclined to gloss over Parvej Khan’s missed test in Nuh, Haryana, since he had submitted himself to a test in New Delhi the same day.
This possibility gains credence when one considers the fact that NADA had worked with alacrity in the earlier two instances, notifying him within three weeks of the first failure on May 12, 2023, and the second on July 7, 2023. It is likely that WADA, which is tracking Whereabouts issues in India, would have persuaded NADA to change its view.
NADA would not have needed any reminding that WADA created Operation Carousel in 2019 to study the doping practices and patterns of Indian athletes., Operation Carousel not only advised the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games anti-doping Taskforce with a report and identified 13 athletes for target testing.
More significantly, in November 2022, WADA discovered that while more than 25 per cent of the athletes on the NADA Registered Testing Pool had not made a Whereabouts filing at the required times or made a delayed Whereabouts Filing, NAD had not registered a Whereabouts Failure against any of these athletes.
“The failure of an ADO (Anti-Doping Organisation) to maintain the highest standards of compliance in Whereabouts Requirements only benefits those wishing to cheat the system. Moreover, it undermines the trust of clean Athletes,” Operation Carousel had said in July 2023, pointing out that Whereabouts Requirements must be diligently monitored and enforced.
To get back to the sluggish progress of the case, though Parvej Khan offered his explanation and requested NADA not to consider the December 5, 2023, episode as a Whereabouts Failure, it dragged its feet in making a decision. Nearly six weeks after he first wrote to NADA, Parvej Khan sought an administrative review of the missed test.
It took five months for the administrative review report to be ready and a further two weeks for NADA to make a decision that Parvej Khan had indeed missed a test for the third time within a 12 month period. By this time, of course, NADA had placed him on Provisional Suspension after he tested positive in National Inter-State Athletics Championships in Panchkula.
Let us view this case – and we shall focus only on the bit on whereabouts failure – against the prism of a couple of cases that the Athletics Integrity Unit has made public.
The timeframe between French 400m hurdler Wilfried Happio’s third Whereabouts Failure and the imposition of the Provisional Suspension was barely four months. AIU took less than two months after Ukraine Shot Putter Roman Kokoshko’s third Whereabouts Failure to impose a Provisional Suspension on him.
Another aspect that comes to light on a reading of the order is that Parvej Khan can consider himself lucky since the ADDP has not ordered the disqualification of results from December 5, 2023, when the third Whereabouts Failure happened. It directed that the invalidation of results only from June 27, 2024, the date on which his sample was collected in Panchkula.
Therefore, his personal best times in 800m, 1500m and Mile – on both indoor and outdoor tracks – registered between January 13 and June 8, 2024, will stay on record. Unless, of course, NADA or Athletics Integrity Unit or WADA challenges the ADDP order and seeks modification to take into account the Whereabouts Failures. Or the panel itself does a rethink.
