NEW DELHI: India’s judo campaign at the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow has suffered another setback. A day after 73kg judoka Arun Kumar was disqualified after failing a drug test, CWG silver medalist Tulika Maan was withdrawn from the Glasgow Games after coming under scrutiny over alleged failures at the venue.TimesofIndia.com spoke to the president of the Judo Federation of India (JFI). Mukesh Kumarwho confirmed the development and said the matter was being looked into.Confirming the development, Kumar said, “He has not told us about his whereabouts. We are looking into it. According to the rules, an athlete needs to disclose his whereabouts to ANYONE. He has not.”“She was called to the NADA office. She went there. We will talk to her. Let’s see what decision comes. But as an athlete, he had to disclose his location so that the test could be done on time,” he said.Tulika is one of India’s strongest medal hopes in judo at the Glasgow Games. She won a silver medal in the women’s +78 kg category at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. India’s judo competition at the 2026 Games is scheduled from July 31 to August 2.The development comes just a day after 73kg judoka Arun was declared ineligible following an adverse analytical finding in an out-of-competition test conducted by the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA).Arun had experienced rapid growth in recent years. He won gold at the 2023 Macau Junior Asian Cup, followed by another gold at the 2025 Taipei Asian Open and a bronze medal at the Hong Kong Asian Open. Earlier this year, she finished seventh at the prestigious Tashkent Grand Slam, earning her first Commonwealth Games selection.
When Indian athletes faced similar cases
This is not the first time an Indian athlete has taken action over venue failures.sprinter Hima Das received a 16-month retrospective suspension from NADA after registering three on-site failures within a 12-month period (the suspension runs from July 22, 2023 to November 21, 2025).Boxer Parveen Hooda was suspended by the International Testing Agency (ITA) for failures in the venue (the suspension was from April 2022 and March 2023). She has also been stripped of her bronze medal from 2022 Asian games.
What is the location system?
The spot system is an anti-doping rule that allows authorities to carry out random out-of-competition tests, without warning, on elite athletes.Athletes who are part of a Registered Testing Pool (RTP) must submit details of their status every three months through WADA’s ADAMS platform or the Athlete Central app.They must also provide a fixed time slot of 60 minutes each day during which they will be available at a specific location for testing.If a doping control officer visits during that one-hour window and cannot find the athlete, it may be recorded as a missed test. Failure to submit or update location details is known as filing failure.Under the anti-doping rules, any combination of three missed tests or filing failures in a 12-month period is treated as an anti-doping rule violation and can lead to a ban of one to two years.