4 days ago
Karnataka HC quashes doping ban on ‘pork-eating' hoopster Rai
BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court has quashed the four-year suspension of former national basketball player Shashank J Rai by the Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel (ADDP).
The ADDP had banned Rai (32), the 6.5-foot-tall hoopster from Mangalore, on October 11, 2022, for testing positive for 19-NA (a metabolite of Nandrolone). Rai's appeal was rejected by the Anti-Doping Appeal Panel on April 16, 2024.
Rai had challenged the ban saying the presence of 19-NA in his sample was not a result of willful ingestion of a performance-enhancing substance, but rather an inadvertent consequence of consuming pork, a staple in the cuisine of his native, coastal Karnataka.
Justice M Nagaprasanna's order said the penalty imposed by the anti-doping agency was in ignorance of Rai's assertion.
'The court finds the impugned orders vitiated by non-consideration of vital material, absence of reasoned adjudication and a palpable breach of the principle of fairness,' the court observed.
On February 5, 2022, while participating in a preparatory camp in Bengaluru, intended for India's elite basketball contingent, the petitioner's urine sample was collected by the National Anti-Doping Agency and the same was opened and resealed in Delhi. The charges from the petitioner for conducting the Sample-B test were also collected by the Agency. Then the sample was sent to a laboratory in Rome.
