Wrestler Seema Bisla Slapped With One Year Ban for Whereabouts Failure

Tokyo Olympian and 2021 Asian Championships bronze medallist wrestler Seema Bisla has been handed a one-year ban by the Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel (ADDP) of the NADA for ”whereabouts failure”.

The ADDP passed the order of banning the 30-year-old Seema on July 21.

Her ban period began on May 12 this year, according to the latest list of athletes sanctioned by the ADDP, put up by the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) on its website.

Seema had won a bronze in women’s freestyle 50kg class in the 2021 Asian Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She lost in the 50kg round of 16 bout in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

There are two types of whereabouts failures — filing failures and missed tests. It is, however, not known about the nature of Seema’s whereabouts failures — whether filing failures or missed tests or a combination of both. Under the World Athletics Anti-Doping (WADA) rules, any combination of three whereabouts failures — filing failure and/or missed test — within a period of 12 months constitute an anti-doping rule violation, for which the applicable sanction is two years’ ineligibility subject to a reduction to a minimum of one year depending on the degree of fault of the athlete.

Athletes included in the Registered Testing Pool (RTP) must provide a full address for their overnight location, the name and full address of each location where they train, work or conduct other regular scheduled activities, as well as the usual time-frames of each activity.

RTP athletes must also identify a 60-minute window and location for each day of the quarter, during which they must be available for testing. Failure to comply with whereabouts and testing obligations will result in a whereabouts failure.

Seema was on the NADA RTP list for Quarter 2 this year (April to June) but was removed from that list for Q3 (July to September).

Last month, the NADA issued notice on multiple World Championships medallist and Asian Championships gold winner Vinesh Phogat for whereabouts failure for the first time in 12 months. Vinesh has been a part of the RTP since December 2022.