India now has more suspended track and field athletes than any country in the world. The Athletics Integrity Unit’s latest ineligible list puts the country at 148, two ahead of Kenya on 146 and well clear of Russia in third with 66. The list covers positive drug tests, test evasion, sample tampering, whereabouts failures, and trafficking, and India leads across the board.
India Tops AIU Doping List With 148 Suspended Athletes
April 1, 2026 · 2 min read · Steve Griffiths
The overtaking is recent, although the trajectory has been visible for years. At the end of 2022, India had 65 athletes on the AIU list, behind Russia’s 92 and Kenya’s 54. By December 2024, Kenya had surged to 119 and India to 108, while Russia had dropped to 73. In the fifteen months since, India has added 40 names. Russia, the country that defined athletics’ doping era, has been shedding cases while India accumulates them.
India’s 7,113 samples tested in 2024 produced 260 adverse analytical findings: a positivity rate of 3.6%, the highest among major testing nations and one that has kept India atop WADA’s global adverse-findings rankings for three consecutive years. China’s 24,214 samples produced a 0.2% positivity rate in the same period, and the United States returned 1.1% from 6,592. The rate is the problem, and more testing will only confirm it. Tamil Nadu sprinter Sekar Dhanalakshmi received an eight-year suspension in 2025 after testing positive for a second time, caught during the Inter-State National Championships. Middle-distance runner Parvej Khan, who had made a name at the NCAA level, is banned until July 2030. Repeat offenders and rising talent appearing on the same list suggests the problem is systemic.
The Athletics Federation of India announced a series of interventions through 2025, none of which have moved the numbers. At the January 2025 AGM in Chandigarh, the AFI introduced mandatory coach registration with a July 31 deadline, an anti-doping cell to identify suspect coaches, and plans to compile a list of training centres acting as what officials called “hideouts” for cheaters. Adille Sumariwalla, speaking to PTI in July 2025, framed the stakes in blunt terms: “All those who are involved in doping will have to be sent to jail. Only then people will realise that this is not a joke.” He warned that athletes training with unregistered coaches would be ineligible for national awards and that unregistered coaches faced blacklisting. Nine months after that deadline, the number of suspended Indian athletes has risen by 40. No AFI official has publicly responded to the April 2026 figures.
India’s active pursuit of the 2036 Olympic Games makes these numbers more than a sporting embarrassment. The IOC treats anti-doping governance as an evaluation criterion, and WADA has already named India in two special reports, including one on doping among minors. A country asking to host the Olympics while leading the world in anti-doping violations in the games’ most popular discipline is making a case that answers itself. The AFI’s interventions may have been well-intentioned, but the numbers so far suggest they arrived too late or moved too slowly.