Doping charge: Karnataka High Court sets aside four-year ban imposed on national level basketball player Shashank Rai
Terming the actions of anti-doping agencies 'a classic illustration of breach of sample integrity' and absence of fair hearing, the High Court of Karnataka set aside the four-year ban imposed on State's national-level basketball player Shashank J. Rai in 2022 after he tested positive of a prohibited drug in a dope test.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order recently while allowing a petition filed by Mr. Rai, a national-level basketball player, who is a Deputy Range Forest Officer in the State.
Mr. Rai was banned from basketball for four years in October, 2022, and the Anti-Doping Appellate Authority (ADAA) in April, 2024, rejected his appeal against the ban.
'From pork, not drug abuse'
The court said that the agencies, including ADAA had failed to apply their mind in the manner known to law on the claim of the player, who presented his case with vital material rooted in plausible biochemical explanation.
The player claimed that he is a regular pork eater, and exogenous traces of 19-Norandrosterone (19-NA) substance detected in his urine were consistent with the ingestion of meat from un-castrated male pigs and not attributable to anabolic steroid abuse, the court said, while pointing out that ADAA had 'neither called for further investigation nor explained its rejection of the material produced by the player' in support of his claim.
The court said that it is mindful that anti-doping adjudication operates under a regime of strict liability but that 'does not mean that strictness in liability does not mandate callousness in process'.
'The foundational requirements of principles of natural justice cannot be sacrificed projecting administrative expediency,' the court said, while pointing out that results of the initial dope test were not disclosed to the player either in the notice of charge or in the order of ban, but was disclosed only before the ADAA. This was in violation of Section 22(8) of the Act, which mandates fair hearing and reasoning, the court said.
Pointing out that the sample of his urine travelled all over, from Bengaluru to New Delhi to Rome, the court said that this is a classic illustration of breach of sample integrity as the norms of Section 21 of the National Anti-Doping Act, 2022, which would require accurate, verifiable and documented procedure of sample handling, were breached.
Suffered ignominy
Pointing out that once a sportsperson is found accused of doping, his past achievements become suspect, the court said that 'it is therefore necessary for the authorities, who deal with cases of suspected doping to observe punctilious exactitude in the observance of procedure and consideration of all material produced by the sportsperson suspected of doping in an enquiry or an appeal.'
The petitioner, a national sportsman and a civil servant in uniform, has 'now suffered the ignominy of public censure and has seen his professional aspirations wither under the cloud of suspicion due to non-application of mind by the ADAA on the unimpeachable explanation rendered by the player/petitioner with documents of sterling quality', the court observed.
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