New Delhi: India’s Commonwealth Games campaign has faced yet another major setback with a silver medal at the 2022 Birmingham CWG. Get up, Mother suspended by the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) due to its failure, could participate in Glasgow 2026 even without flying from India.Sources told TOI that Tulika, one of India’s brightest medal contenders in the women’s judo +78kg category, has received three failures in a span of 12 months, leading to a temporary suspension under the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Code. He was summoned by NADA and is scheduled to appear before the Anti-Doping Agency on Thursday.Failure to comply with doping rules includes failure to file and missed tests. Failure to book occurs when an athlete fails to provide or change the information of an authorized place to be tested out of competition, while a missed test is recorded when the doping inspector cannot find the athlete within the window of 60 minutes of testing. Any combination of three times of failure to book or missed tests within 12 months is a violation of the anti-doping rules and has a fixed sentence of two years, unless convicted. Tulika’s temporary suspension comes as yet another setback to India’s CWG preparations. The Indian team is now reduced to 122 athletes, and the heavyweight judoka will miss the Games after the suspension. The Indian judo team is set to travel to Glasgow on July 27, with the competitions starting on July 31.The 27-year-old has been one of the leading figures in Indian judo for the past decade. Raised by her mother, Delhi Police sub-inspector Amrita, after losing her father at a young age, Tulika switched from football to judo at the age of eight before stepping up under coach Yashpal Solanki.Her breakthrough moment came at the 2022 CWG in Birmingham, where she won the silver medal in the women’s +78kg category, becoming only the second Indian judoka to achieve the feat. He later battled a serious knee injury to qualify for the Paris Olympics, where he represented India as the country’s only judoka.The suspension will now put a shadow on the career of one of India’s most successful judokas, and the outcome will depend on the outcome of the NADA case. If approved, Tulika could face a two-year ban, which would seriously damage his career and India’s future prospects.
