The Hindu : Sport / Hockey : Tejbir case back in IHF lap

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 10, 2006

Sport

Sport - Hockey

Tejbir case back in IHF lap

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI : Nearly two years after the case first cropped up, the `Tejbir doping case' is back with the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF). The Sports Authority of India (SAI) has asked the IHF to explain Tejbir Singh's inclusion in the Indian team for the forthcoming series against Pakistan and the Commonwealth Games.

SAI wants to know what action was taken against him, if at all, after he was reported for a steroid positive in March, 2004, and why the IHF had kept quiet since April, 2004 on the subject despite two official letters sent to it by the SAI Teams Wing.

Tejbir played for the Chandigarh Dynamos in the recent Premier Hockey League (PHL) at Chandigarh and was named in a 20-member Indian squad from which the team for the series against Pakistan, starting at Chandigarh on February 17, and the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in March, will be chosen.

Tejbir had tested positive for nandrolone in a pre-departure test conducted by the SAI before the Madrid qualifiers for the Olympics and though he was chosen in the team he was called back before the tournament started once the test report was known. The IHF had then explained that the Punjab Police player had suffered a muscle injury during practice.

Ostrich-like policy

The IHF has all along maintained an ostrich-like policy on the matter of Tejbir's positive for the steroid refusing to accept, even when queried by the media, that there was a case at all and later keeping quiet on the topic, firm in the belief perhaps that the controversy will die down on its own.

Answering questions from the media, Tejbir had explained then that he had been administered an injection in an Amritsar hospital for an injury he had suffered in a Delhi tournament and that might have led to the positive test. Had he been given a two-year suspension, Tejbir would not have been eligible to play at least in the just-concluded PHL.

The Union Government guidelines do not permit players who turn in dope positives to attend National camps or to represent the country unless a proper follow-up action had been initiated and a laid-down procedure gone through before declaring a player "not guilty".

In Tejbir's case since the IHF did not even accept that there was a case to be looked into, the question of a hearing or a follow-up action did not arise.

The SAI is concerned that with India getting ready to host the Commonwealth Games in 2010 and to bid for the 2014 Asian Games apart from the 2016 Olympic Games, the federations do not go through a farcical dope control programme eventually leading to exoneration of the "guilty" without even a hearing.

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