AFI conducts bag checks for syringes, banned substances at National Inter-State C’ships

Bhubaneswar, June 27: AFI officials conducted surprise checks of the bags of all participants at the ongoing National Inter-State Senior Championships here to look for syringes and banned substances, but did not find any prohibited items, federation spokesperson Adille Sumariwalla said on Saturday.
More than 600 athletes are competing in the five-day championships which began on Wednesday.
The championships also serves as a selection trial for the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya in Japan from September 19 to October 4.
“We have zero tolerance to any of this (prohibited drugs related matter), we have no-needle policy. Actually on Thursday itself, we raided all the athletes’ bags to see if anybody had any needles or forbidden substances and we didn’t find anything. So we already searched them,” Sumariwalla said.
“AFI is the one that pushed for criminalisation of doping, that pushed the original doping Act. We will work together with every institute whether it’s AIU (Athletics Integrity Unit), NADA or WADA to try and fight this menace in this country,” said Sumariwalla.
Recently, India was designated as a country with an “extremely high” risk of doping by World Athletics after topping the list of doping offenders for the past two years, a development which will put the athletes under more stringent anti-doping stipulations. (PTI)