NEW DELHI, 31 August — The small, but lively, world of Indian weightlifting is in a state of turmoil less than a year after Karnam Malleswari broke fresh ground for it by giving India only her third Olympic bronze medal at the Sydney Games – wrestler K.D. Jadhav (Helsinki 1952) and Leander Paes (Atlanta 1996) are the only other Indians to have won such a distinction. The image of the iron sport has taken a severe beating with the six-month suspension of Kunjarani after a positive dope test in the Asian championships in South Korea in July where she won a gold medal and two silvers. Naturally, she has been ordered to return the medals. This with the Afro-Asian Games barely two months away.

The bespectacled 48kg category champion from Manipur who over long years of sweat and toil with the barbell has become something of an icon in her sport, with a number of world and Asian titles under her belt, expectedly has denied taking the offending drug strychnine. In her appeal against the sentence to the Budapest-based International Weightlifting Federation she has claimed to have taken an energizer of the brand name Vita X Gold and the analgesic Disprin to combat the effects of stress and fatigue, the result of all the running about and consequent tension she had undergone to get herself cleared for the July championship in Korea.

This is not consistent with her earlier claim that she had taken three cups of coffee and Disprin prior to the competition.

Strychnine, or “kuchila”, according to medical textbooks, is a drug obtained from the seeds of the poisonous strychnos nux vomica, found in the jungles of India. It is used as a respiratory stimulant. Also as a rodenticide and for killing dogs. Interestingly, the seeds are believed to have been used as arrow poison by Red Indians. Equally interestingly, it is taken as an aphrodisiac. Used prior to a competition, it can be effective for 24 to 72 hours.

While one waits to see if Kunjarani is able to prove her innocence or at least get her six month ban for her first offense reduced to a warning, one is reminded of the case of badminton star Aparna Popat who had received a three-month sentence after testing positive for a stimulant, which resulted in her missing the Uber Cup. She is believed to have taken the vigorously advertised D’Cold, available over the counter, on the eve of a match for relief from a bad cold. In her case there was no reprieve. International badminton officials had then stressed that players need to be properly educated about drug rules, advice which should be followed by all sportspersons.