NEW DELHI: The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) has suspended the Indian Weightlifting Federation following "four positive tests" returned by its lifters this year. The

IWF's Executive Board will decide on the suspension's duration by May-end.

The information was posted on the IWF website on Tuesday.

It was a surprise on two counts. For starters, the Commonwealth Games Federation is yet to come to the conclusion that a doping rule violation did occur in the cases of Tejinder Singh and Edwin Raju, the two lifters caught at the Melbourne Games.

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Though the delay in the decision is only procedural, international federations do wait for the outcome of such adjudication as that is under CAS.

Secondly, the IWF has named a fourth lifter, B. Premeelavalli as having tested positive. (The IWF statement has actually named Premeelavalli as Ms Bodari Prangel Valli.)

Till now, the general belief was that Shailaja Pujari alone had come `positive' in an out of competition test done by the WADA at Patiala last month. Now it turns out that Premeelavalli also must have returned a `positive' in one of the two WADA tests before the team left for Melbourne.

It is a different matter that Premeelavalli did test `positive' in a test done by the Sports Authority of India at the Dope Control Centre (DCC) here.

Only tests done at accredited laboratories and that too in controls carried out by the IWF or an international agency like WADA, are taken into consideration while imposing sanctions.

The WADA statement said: "Regrettably, four adverse analytical findings were reported on the occasion of doping controls carried out on the Indian team members. The Indian Weightlifting Federation has been suspended, the duration of which will be decided by May-end."

The statement also said that the provisional suspension on these lifters would remain in force "as long as all the applicable procedures have been completed."

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