Manju Bala

Introduction

Manju Bala is an Indian hammer thrower from Rajasthan who won bronze at the 2014 Incheon Asian Games and represented India at multiple continental meets, including the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi and the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, and who in 2025 received a five-year doping ban from the Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel (ADDP) of India’s National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA). Bala tested positive for two prohibited substances, the anabolic steroid dehydrochloromethyl-testosterone and the selective androgen receptor modulator LGD-4033, known as ligandrol. Her positive test was made public by NADA in September 2024, and the ADDP delivered its formal decision on October 15, 2025, with the suspension running retroactively from July 10, 2024, the date of her provisional suspension, through to mid-2029. She was in her thirties and ranked among India’s leading women’s hammer throwers, having also been national champion in the event multiple times.

Background Information

Bala’s career peak came at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, where she took bronze in the hammer throw and stood on the podium behind the Chinese throwers Zhang Wenxiu and Wang Zheng. She was a multiple-time Indian national champion in the event and set a personal best of 64.88 metres in 2021. Her samples were collected in mid-2024, with NADA’s provisional-suspension list showing one out-of-competition collection in her home state and a second during competition at the Senior Inter-State National Athletics Meet in Panchkula, where she had won gold. When the positives were made public in September 2024, she was among a large group of Indian athletes and wrestlers provisionally suspended in that round, which also included Hangzhou Asian Games shot put medallist Kiran Baliyan.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Banned five years for doping. Bala was banned for five years by NADA’s Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel in October 2025 for the steroid dehydrochloromethyl-testosterone and SARMS LGD-4033, with the ban running from July 10, 2024.

The ADDP’s five-year ban, among the stiffer sanctions the agency has imposed in recent years, reflected the combination of two prohibited substances in her samples: dehydrochloromethyl-testosterone, an anabolic androgenic steroid, and LGD-4033, a selective androgen receptor modulator designed to mimic steroid effects. The ruling bars Bala from competition, selection, or participation in any event sanctioned by the Athletics Federation of India or its affiliated organisations until the suspension ends in 2029, and strips her of eligibility for official rankings and national team consideration for its duration. Because the ban was backdated to her July 10, 2024 provisional suspension, it also has the effect of covering the competitive period after her positive samples were collected. Her case was announced alongside a round of other ADDP decisions: sprinter Mohan Saini received four years, bodybuilders Gopala Krishnan, Amit Kumar and Rajvardhan Sanjay Waskar six years each, Shubham Mahara four years, boxer Sumit two years, canoeist Nitin Verma four years and basketball player Shivendra Pandey six years, while the Anti-Doping Appeal Panel upheld the 2024 four-year ban of sprinter Himani Chandel.

Public Reaction and Consequences

Indian sports coverage framed the ban as evidence of NADA’s intensifying enforcement against doping across disciplines, with the agency’s round of suspensions touching athletics, bodybuilding, boxing, canoeing and basketball in a single announcement. For Bala personally, the consequence is total: a five-year exile that reaches past her mid-thirties, the age window in which hammer throwers typically retire, and the loss of every national federation honour, ranking and team place for the period. Her bronze medal from Incheon 2014 remains a matter of the historical record from before the violation, but her competitive present and future in the sport, including any national championship or Commonwealth Games pathway, is closed for the term of the sanction.

Current Status

Bala is serving a five-year period of ineligibility that runs from July 10, 2024 to mid-2029, which means she will be nearly 40 when the ban expires. The ADDP decision of October 15, 2025 is the operative sanction, and no appeal overturning it has been reported. She has not publicly responded to the ban in the coverage reviewed, and the World Athletics profile records her status as suspended. Her case now sits within the wider record of Indian doping sanctions, in which NADA and the Athletics Integrity Unit have banned dozens of athletes across track and field in the mid-2020s.

Impact on Their Career/Life

A career built over a decade of national titles, two Commonwealth Games and an Asian Games podium ends in suspension, with the five-year ban consuming the remaining competitive years of Bala’s athletic prime and beyond. The dual-substance finding placed her case among the most heavily sanctioned of NADA’s recent athletics decisions, and the backdating to 2024 means the violation will define the closing chapter of her throwing career rather than a temporary interruption within it. For Indian hammer throwing, the loss of a multiple national champion to a five-year ban removed one of the event’s most experienced competitors from the national pipeline for the entire championship cycle through the 2026 Asian Games and toward the 2028 Olympic build-up.

Sources

• India Today, “Asian Games medallist Manju Bala gets five-year doping ban, several others suspended,” November 2025. source
• Outlook India, “Asian Games Medallist Manju Bala Receives Five-Year NADA Doping Ban, Many Others Suspended,” November 2025. source
• Rediff Sports, “Caught doping! Indian athlete handed brutal 5-year ban,” November 2025. source