Lucknow: 340 gm rare radioactive substance seized, 8 held

LUCKNOW: The Lucknow police on Friday arrested eight persons who claimed to have californium – one of the most expensive radioactive substances in the world – in their possession and were about to sell it in black market.
Police have recovered 340 grams of the substance and said that according to experts, the value of 1 gram of californium is Rs 170 crore. Californium is used in treatment of cancer.
The sample of the seized substance has been sent to IIT-Kanpur for identification. Police have not ruled out the possibility that the arrested conmen might have been trying to dupe some gullible buyers by selling an ordinary substance claiming it to be californium.
Lucknow police commissioner, DK Thakur, said: “Prima facie it appears that the recovered substance has some radioactive properties but only experts can establish if it is actually californium or not.”
The arrested persons were identified as Abhishek Chakraborty, Amit Kumar, Sheetal Gupta (all from Lucknow), Harish Chaudhary, Ramesh Tiwari and Shyam Sundar (of Basti) and Mahesh Kumar and Ravishankar Singh from Bihar. Police said Abhishek Chakraborty was the mastermind of the gang.
“The mastermind of the gang, Abhishek Chakraborty, claims to have got the material from a coal field in Bihar. He was planning to sell it to a real estate agent and others,” said ADCP, north zone, Prachi Singh.
The ADCP said the accused persons were nabbed after a man, Shashilesh Rai, who claimed himself to be a real estate agent, informed the police that Abhishek had promised to give the radioactive substance to him at a throwaway price. Rai said that Chakraborty had already taken Rs 1.2 lakh from him and was demanding more money before handing over the substance.
“A police team in civvies reached the spot near Polytechnic crossing and nabbed eight men with the radioactive substance,” Singh said.
The ADCP said the police sought the opinion of radiologists and chemical engineers in the city to ascertain the value of the seized substance.
“Experts said that 1 gram of the substance costs Rs 170 crore. It is used in metal detectors for identification of gold and silver ores and also in treatment of cancer. Only Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) is authorised by the government to store the substance,” the ADCP said.