Discus thrower Navjeet Kaur Dhillon, who won a bronze medal for India at the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast 2018, was handed a three-year ban by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) after she tested positive for a banned drug.
The AIU is the independent body created by World Athletics that manages all integrity issues – including doping and age fraud. The AIU said that Navjeet Kaur Dhillon, 27, had tested positive for Dehydrochloromethyltestosterone (DHCMT), an anabolic–androgenic steroid prohibited by the World Athletics.
The drug was infamously used to enhance field performances by some East German athletes during the late 1960s.
Navjeet was a regular feature in the domestic competitions and those held outside India this year. She was also part of the Indian contingent for the Commonwealth Games 2022 in Birmingham where she finished eighth in the 11-women discus throw final.
The AIU team took an out-of-the-competition urine sample from Navjeet Kaur Dhillon during the Qosanov Memorial athletics meet in Almaty, Kazakhstan on June 24.
On August 10, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accredited laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland reported an adverse analytical finding in the sample for the presence of a metabolite of DHCMT.
Navjeet Kaur Dhillon told the AIU on August 23 that she had used a supplement that, unknown to her, contained the prohibited substance.
While the standard ban is four years, the ban was reduced by one year after Dhillon admitted the anti-doping rule violation (ADRV) and accepted the sanction.
Navjeet Kaur Dhillon’s three-year ban, as per the AIU website, came into effect on August 11. The Indian athlete will have to forfeit all titles, awards, medals, points prizes and appearance money won on or after June 24, the day when she was tested.
Earlier this year, India’s Tokyo Olympians Shivpal Singh, Kamalpreet Kaur, Dhanalakshmi Sekar and India’s promising long jumper Aishwarya Babu were also caught in the doping net.