Nearly 100 Indian sportspersons have tested positive this year for using banned substances to enhance their performance.
These sportspersons were caught after their blood and urine samples were analysed by the country’s premier drug testing lab, the National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL), Delhi.
The laboratory revealed this figure in its presentation before the new Sports Minister Jitendra Singh in Delhi recently.
The latest data, compiled up to November 15, revealed that out of 3,144 samples of national sportspersons tested, 96 tested positive for banned substances.
The laboratory located in Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium in Delhi also tests international samples. Out of 1,991 samples sent by other countries like Singapore, Malayasia, Srilanka, and Saudi Arabia, 59 tested positive.
Overall, for the current year, 155 of the 5,135 samples tested were positive.
Similarly, for the year 2011, 2,865 national samples were tested out of which, 121 tested positive. Of the 1,659 international samples tested here, 104 tested positive. Overall, 225 of the 4,524 samples (4.97 per cent) tested postive.
According to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) statistics for 2011, India, with the highest percentage of positive samples, tops the list of tests conducted by WADA-accredited laboratories across the world.
India was ahead of Bangkok, Thailand, where 3.59 per cent samples tested positive whereas Ghent, Belgium stood third with 2.2 per cent samples testing positive.
Doping charges have been frequently hitting Indian sports thus exposing rampant use of performance enhancing drugs.
Sports fans were stunned last year when three top-notch women athletes Ashwini Akkunji, Mandeep Kaur and Sini Jose, part of India’s 4x400m relay team which won gold medals at the Delhi Commonwealth Games and the Guangzhou Asian Games, tested positive.
The sports discipline-wise analysis of positive samples revealed that non-Olympics sports like Kabaddi, power-lifting and body building constituted the main offenders in India.
Of the 225 positive cases detected last year, Kabbadi had 70, followed by body building (41), athletics (30), weightlifting (25), power-lifting (13), boxing (12), and wrestling (6).