bengaluru top athlete and 400m hurdler jithin paul who was part of the indian squad in the last asian and commonwealth games was on wednesday asked to leave the national camp after national antidoping agency nada officials seized several vials of a banned drug from his bag kept in the hostel room at the national institute of sports nis in patialaaccording to nada director general navin agarwal the substances were found in the athletes bag during a search conducted last month the drugs around eight vials were seized from the athletes bag during a check conducted on april 17 we have issued a provisional ban agarwal told toi without revealing the name of the top athlete agarwal a senior ips officer who took charge last year denied that the checks were conducted following a tipoff no this was not based on any leads but a random check the officials checked all the rooms used by athletes at the nis and found the drugs from only one athletes bag the dg addedasked whether the drugs were procured from india he said all the drugs were of foreign origin and some of the labels read like russian the sealed vials were tested at the laboratory and were found to contain the banned drug meldonium he addedthe dg also revealed that the suspended athlete had cleared a recent dope test he had undergone a dope test few weeks back but his sample returned a negative result the top nada official said the drugs were seized from jithins bag sources confirmed to toi the 27yearold kerala athlete one of indias best in the onelap race was part of the 4x400m relay squad that finished fourth at the incheon asian games in 2014a former athlete said it is also easy to sabotage an athletes career as the nis rooms used by the athletes mostly remain unlocked if someone wants to fix an athlete then you can easily do it as threefour athletes share a hostel room and the doors are mostly kept unlocked some top athletes do lock up their bags when they are in the camp he saidit is argued that meldonium which got tennis superstar maria sharapova a ban of 15 months stays in the system for nearly a year its difficult to believe that a top athlete will consume meldonium and risk his career knowing fully well that it will remain in your system for many months this looks like a case of sabotage a top coach said but agarwal said the onus is on the athlete to prove his innocence it is up to him to explain how he came in possession of this banned drug he will now have to argue his case before the nada disciplinary panel he saidas per the antidoping rules an athlete who commits an antidoping violation by possession of a prohibited substance may get a suspension ranging from one to four years depending on the athletes fault in certain cases if the athlete admits an