LUCKNOW: The Lucknow police on Friday arrested eight men who claimed to possess californium — among the costliest radioactive materials on earth — in their own possession and were going to market it in black industry.
Authorities have regained 340 g of the material and stated that according to specialists, the value of 1 g of californium is Rs 170 crore.
Californium is utilized in therapy of cancer.
The sample of the captured material was delivered into IIT-Kanpur because of identification.
Authorities haven’t ruled out the chance that the detained conmen could have been attempting to mislead some gullible buyers by promoting a normal substance asserting it to become californium.
Lucknow police commissioner, DK Thakur, stated:”Prima facie it seems that the recovered material has some properties that are radioactive but only specialists can ascertain if it’s really californium or never.
” The arrested persons were identified as Abhishek Chakraborty, Amit Kumar, Sheetal Gupta (from Lucknow), Harish Chaudhary, Ramesh Tiwari and Shyam Sundar (of Basti) along with Mahesh Kumar and Ravishankar Singh out of Bihar.
Authorities stated Abhishek Chakraborty had been the mastermind of this gang.
“The mastermind of this group, Abhishek Chakraborty, claims to have obtained the material out of a lava area in Bihar.
He had been intending to market it to a realtor and many others,” explained ADCP, north , Prachi Singh.
The ADCP stated the accused men were nabbed following a guy, Shashilesh Rai, who promised himself to become a realtor, advised the authorities that Abhishek had sworn to provide the radioactive material to him in a throwaway price.
Rai explained that Chakraborty had taken Rs 1.
2 lakh out of him was demanding more cash prior to handing over the material.
“A police group at civvies reached the place near Polytechnic crossing and nabbed eight guys using the radioactive material,” Singh explained.
The ADCP reported that the police searched the view of radiologists and chemical engineers from town to determine the worth of the seized material.
“Experts stated that 1 g of the material prices Rs 170 crore.
It’s employed in metal sensors for identification of silver and gold ores and in therapy of cancer.
Just Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) is authorised by the authorities to put away the material,” that the ADCP stated.