Wrestler Seema Bisla, who represented India at the Tokyo Olympics and secured a bronze medal at the 2021 Asian Championships, has been subjected to a one-year suspension by the Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel (ADDP) of the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) due to a "whereabouts failure" violation.
The decision to impose the ban was made on July 21 by the ADDP. The suspension officially started on May 12 of this year, as indicated in the most recent roster of sanctioned athletes posted on the NADA website.
Seema got a bronze in the women's freestyle 50kg category at the 2021 Asian Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan. In Tokyo, she crashed out in the round of 16 for the 50kg weight class.
The exact nature of Seema's whereabouts failure remains undisclosed, whether it pertains to filing failures, missed tests, or a combination of both types. According to regulations outlined by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), any combination of three whereabouts failures within a span of 12 months constitutes a violation of anti-doping rules.
The penalty for this violation is two years of ineligibility, with the potential for reduction to a minimum of one year depending on the extent of the athlete's culpability.
Athletes in the Registered Testing Pool (RTP) are required to furnish comprehensive details, including their overnight location, the addresses of training, work, and other routine activities, along with their corresponding timeframes.
Additionally, RTP athletes must allocate a specific 60-minute window and location for each day of a quarter during which they must be available for testing. Failure to adhere to these whereabouts and testing obligations leads to a whereabouts failure designation.
Seema had been included in the NADA RTP list for the Quarter 2 of the year (April to June) but was removed from the list for Q3 (July to September).
Vinesh Phogat, much in the news due to the wrestlers’ protest and with multiple World Championships medals and an Asian Championships gold, received a notice last month from NADA for a whereabouts failure violation, marking her first offence within a year. Phogat, who has been part of the RTP since December 2022, is now under scrutiny.
