yogeshwar dutt
yogeshwar duttReuters

Indian wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt, who failed to win a match at the Rio Olympics, confirmed on Tuesday in a tweet that the bronze medal that he won at the London 2012 Summer Olympics will be upgraded to silver after the silver medallist, the late Besik Kudukhov of Russia, tested positive for doping.

Kudukhov, who finished second in the 60 kg freestyle event, died in a car accident in Russia in 2013 when he was just 27 years old. The World Anti-Doping Agency re-tested the Russian champion's sample and found that it tested positive for banned substances. The samples have now been stored for up to 10 years so that they can be used for advanced testing methods to catch dope-tainted athletes.

"The samples of five wrestlers, including Russia's Besik Kudukhov (60 kg) and Uzbekistan's Artur Taymazov's (120 kg), have tested positive for banned substances. Kudukhov failed a dope test in re-tests of samples collected during the London Games. In Taymazov's case, the re-tests date back to samples collected from the Beijing Games (2008). Kudukhov is a silver medallist and Taymazon a gold-medal winner. They will lose their medals. With Kudukhov testing positive, Yogeshwar Dutt of India will get the silver," the Indian Express quoted sources in United World Wrestling (UWW) as saying.

Dutt now joins wrestler Sushil Kumar and shooter Vijay Kumar, who had also won silver medals for India at the London Games.

The wrestler had lost the pre-quarterfinal to Kudukhov in the 2012 London Olympics but got an opportunity to win the bronze medal in the repechage round. Dutt defeated Franklin Gomez of Puerto Rico, Masoud Esmaeilpour of Iran and Ri Jong-myong of North Korea to clinch bronze in the repechage round.