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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Ruskin Bond hospitalised in Dehradun due to leg problem
Dehradun (PTI): Author Ruskin Bond has been admitted to a hospital in Dehradun due to a leg problem, a close friend of the writer said here on Sunday.
After visiting Bond at the hospital, well-known Dehradun-based publisher Upendra Arora said the elderly author was unable to walk properly, following which he was admitted to a private hospital here on Saturday.
The 91-year-old Bond, a recipient of the Padma Bhushan, lives in the Landour area of Mussoorie.
Arora said Bond is undergoing physiotherapy under medical supervision and is expected to be discharged from the hospital in two to three days.
"There is nothing serious," he said.
Bond has written more than 500 short stories, essays and novels, of which 69 books are for children.
He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1992 for Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra.
