Pakistan wrestling holds its breath: Inam Butt and the eye-drops case ahead of ITA doping ruling

People remember the shot; I remember how the stands breathed. This weekend in Pakistan, the stands are not breathing — they are holding their breath. Former beach wrestling world champion Inam Butt, the man who once lifted tens of thousands of spectators in Karachi and Lahore to their feet, is awaiting a ruling from the International Testing Agency (ITA) on an anti-doping rule violation. What he used was not a stimulant. It was a bottle of eye drops, prescribed to treat an eye condition. But under the WADA Code, something seemingly harmless can turn a champion into a suspect. The ITA is expected to decide within a week: a two-month suspension, backdated to April, and the stripping of his silver medal from the Asian Beach Games. Lighter than many feared, but far from light. To understand how eye drops became a suspension, one must start with the sport itself. Beach wrestling is one of the youngest disciplines of United World Wrestling (UWW): it takes place on sand, inside a circle drawn in the sand, and the aim is to take the opponent down by technique rather than to pin for points as in Olympic freestyle. Because it is young, the sport has few elite athletes, few tournaments, little money. That is why Inam Butt's world title matters so much to Pakistan — a country with a deep traditional wrestling culture in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but one that rarely converts that tradition into international honours. The trouble began with a piece of paper: TUE, short for Therapeutic Use Exemption. In anti-doping, an athlete with a genuine medical condition who needs a prohibited medication must obtain an exemption in advance. The exemption does not legalise cheating; it lets the anti-doping body confirm that the athlete is genuinely ill, that the medication is necessary, and that the dose fits the treatment. Inam Butt failed to obtain the TUE in time. The ITA — the independent body handling the case under the WADA Code — accepted that the medication was prescribed for his eyes and was not intended to enhance performance. But the procedure was still broken. Under the WADA Code, breaking the procedure is a violation, even without intent to cheat. In an ideal system, the TUE protects the athlete. In reality, at poor federations, the TUE is a paperwork maze: forms, medical records, tests, deadlines. For an athlete training twice a day, competing and coaching at the same time, and sitting on federation committees, that maze is nearly impossible to navigate alone. Inam Butt's case shows what happens when there is no one to help navigate it. The most important part of the upcoming ruling is not the two months. It is how the ITA classifies the fault. The WADA sanctioning scale includes intentional, significant fault, no significant fault, and no fault. A two-month ban, backdated to April, indicates the ITA places the case in the "no significant fault or negligence" category: there was fault, but not serious fault. No one is declaring him innocent. This is an administrative conviction of a careless man, not an organised cheater. Yet the file contains a contradiction that made me stop. Early reports said Inam Butt "failed to obtain the necessary TUE in time." Another source said the ITA granted permission for the medication for a one-year period. These details can only be reconciled if the TUE was granted retroactively, or if the permission covered a different window than the sample collection. If the ITA granted retroactive approval, it recognised the athlete's good faith. That would explain why the expected sanction is two months, not two years. That grey zone in the file — where paperwork does not match — is where a journalist should dig, instead of repeating a number. The fact that the suspension is backdated to April also reveals something important: that is the period of the Asian Beach Games, where Inam won a silver medal. The sample may have been taken at the event. That explains why the medal is stripped, and why the athlete may still compete at the next Asian Games: the ban has been backdated, and most of it has already passed. So why strip the medal? Because anti-doping relies on the principle of strict liability. Whether the violation was unintentional, whether the drug did not improve performance, whether the tribunal believes the athlete — none of it changes one fact: the prohibited substance was present in the body. The result achieved during that period is forfeited, without any proof that doping caused it. The principle was designed to deter deliberate fraud, but it also crushes tragic cases. A Pakistani wrestler brought home a silver medal in April; months later, the medal is returned, even though no evidence shows eye drops made him stronger. That is the line between justice and legal technique — and modern sport lives right on that line. The case matters even more because Inam Butt is not just an athlete. He is the head coach of Pakistan's national wrestling team, a former secretary-general of the Pakistan Wrestling Federation (PWF), and the former chairman of the athletes' commission at the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA). In other words, before becoming a defendant, he was part of the system that judges him. In big sports nations, athlete, coach and administrator are three different roles with cross-checks. At a small federation like the PWF, one person can play all three. He handles tactics, paperwork and diplomacy. And when that same person faces a medical problem, no administrator exists to remind him: "you need a TUE before using those drops." The issue is not personal irresponsibility. The issue is structure: when a federation places too many roles on one person, all risks land on that one person — and when he falls, the federation falls with him. Inam Butt voluntarily stepped down from his administrative positions when the case was made public. That was a smart governance move. It protected the reputation of the PWF and POA, and it created an image of accountability before the tribunal even spoke. But let us not confuse resignation with an admission of guilt. It was a move to protect the institution — and it shows Inam Butt understands that in a doping case, what is judged is not only the substance in the blood, but the way the whole organisation operates. Now the part where I may be wrong. Based on 36 years of following fighters and federations, I have seen lenient verdicts come from status, not evidence. I ask myself: would a young wrestler, unknown, with no administrative seat and no private lawyer, receive a two-month ban and the same sympathy if he forgot his TUE? I have no certain answer. But I know that justice is never completely blind to status. Berlin did not teach me football. It taught me how to be silent after the final whistle. In this case, the whistle sounded in April, but the silence is not over. And the most important part of that silence is not the two-month ban and not the stripped medal. It is the lesson left to the PWF: after losing a secretary-general, an athletes' commission chairman and a head coach in one single case, will the federation build a dedicated unit for medical exemptions, or will it again place everything on one man's shoulders? Let me record a testable prediction: if the ITA confirms the proposal, Inam Butt will be eligible for the upcoming Asian Games. But what deserves attention is not whether he competes well. It is whether the PWF will assign someone to handle TUE paperwork — someone sitting in the corner of the changing room, before any prescription is opened. The greatest rebellion is not burning a flag; it is keeping the rhythm of the ball in a noisy age. Here, keeping the rhythm means keeping the process. And the emptiest stand is not when tickets are sold out, but when people have run out of reasons to sing. Pakistan is holding on so it does not lose that reason.