Queen Latifa doping: Sajnani denies charges

BENGALURU: Two days after the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) investigating the alleged horse doping scandal involving three-year-old filly Queen Latifa at the Bangalore Turf Club (BTC) filed a chargesheet, two of the six accused – co-owner of the horse and restaurateur Arjun Sajnani and his business partner Vivek Ubhayakar – have denied the charges.

Welcoming the chargesheet in the case, they told Deccan Chronicle that procaine, administered by the BTC vet, on Queen Latifa is a non-performance-enhancing anaesthetic and it was given to the filly to alleviate the pain from a penicillin injection 25 days before the race. The correspondence between various labs and the BTC vet are available for scrutiny and they clearly indicate lack of presence of any drug, they said.

“Both Vivek and I have always stated that we are innocent of all charges and the filing of the chargesheet provides us with the opportunity of obtaining an honourable discharge. We have always held that the case against all of us is the result of calumny, misrepresentation and malice. We have no hesitation in unequivocally saying that nefarious persons with vested interests have initiated a process in court which will lend to the wastage of precious court time and effort of agencies which could have been better employed to serve society by ridding the state of genuine crime and not concocted, contrived cases like the one we have been foisted with. The lies that have been put out to the media are disgusting and shameful,” Mr Sajnani said.

Mr Sajnani said, “Vivek and I have been associated with racing for over 30 years without the slightest trace of a slur against either of us. We will seek judicial recourse against this chargesheet and endeavour, through the judicial system in which we have complete faith, to remove the blight and dishonour that may possibly have been brought on to us and the BTC with the kind of malicious, lying propaganda put out by those who wish to bring disgrace and disrepute to this sport.”BTC’s former CEO Nirmal Prasad too has been named in the chargesheet.