Four Indian athletes handed provisional suspension, two banned for doping offences
New Delhi (PTI): Goa National Games silver medal-winning steeplechaser Mohammed Nur Hasan, 2019 Asian Championships bronze medallist Murli Kumar Gavit, and India's World Cross Country Championships participants Hemraj Gurjar and Anjali Kumari have been put under provisional suspension after they tested positive for banned substances.
Distance runner G Lakshmanan and sprinter Himani Chandel have also been handed two and four-year bans respectively by the National Anti-Doping Agency panels in fresh doping cases in Indian athletics.
Hasan had won a 3000m steeplechase gold each in the Federation Cup and National Open Championships last year.
Gurjar had won the National Cross Country Championships in Gaya in January but finished 88th at the World Cross Country in Belgrade in March.
Anjali Kumari had finished second in the National Cross Country Championships in January and was chosen for the Worlds where she finished 80th.
Gavit, who won a bronze in 2019 Asian Championships in Doha, was the gold winner in a strange 5000m race at the National Open Championships last year where no athlete seemed keen to win the race.
All four of them figured in the latest list of athletes handed provisional suspension by the National Anti Doping Agency (NADA). It is not known where and when the samples were collected.
Meanwhile, it also emerged that Lakshmanan, who won a gold each in 5000m and 10,000m in the 2017 Asian Championships, has been handed two-year ban from August 10 last year onwards. His name figured among those who were handed sanctions by either the Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel or the Anti-Doping Appeal Panel of the NADA.
Top sprinter Himani Chandel has also been banned for four years effective from June 15 last year.
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Astronaut Sunita Williams to participate in Kerala Literature Festival 2026
New Delhi (PTI): Former NASA astronaut Sunita Williams is set to participate at the ninth edition of Kerala Literature Festival (KLF), starting January 22, announced organisers on Tuesday.
Williams, 60, who has spent over 300 days in space, is expected to reflect on her journeys beyond earth and speak about science, exploration, leadership, resilience, and the enduring power of human curiosity.
“The Kerala Literature Festival has always believed in expanding the idea of the fest to include science, discovery, leadership, and the human spirit. Sunita Williams represents the courage to explore the unknown and the discipline required to stretch human boundaries.
"She has also been a well-wisher of DC Books and KLF, which makes her presence at the festival especially meaningful. Her participation will inspire audiences across generations," said Ravi DeeCee, Managing Director of DC Books and chief facilitator at KLF.
On her third mission to the International Space Station in June last year along with Butch Wilmore, which lasted for 286 days, Williams created history by setting a record of most time spent spacewalking by a woman.
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She was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1998 and she underwent training at the Johnson Space Center. She also worked in Moscow with the Russian Space Agency on the Russian contribution to the International Space Station.
KLF 2026 will host over 500 speakers from across the world and will feature Germany as the guest nation for this year’s edition.
The festival’s speaker line-up include Nobel Laureates Abdulrazak Gurnah, Olga Tokarczuk and Abhijit Banerjee, Booker Prize-winning writer-activist Banu Mushtaq, Olympian Ben Johnson, former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, artist Cheyenne Olivier, economist Arvind Subramanian as well as noted writers Gabriela Ybarra, Peggy Mohan, Shobhaa De and Amish Tripathi.
