Source Was Scrapped Machine from University
Police in New Delhi Police said it has traced the origin of the radioactive Cobalt 60, which has led to the death of one person and the serious illness of seven others, to scrap sold by the Department of Chemistry at the University of Delhi in February.
According to the police, the Cobalt-60 was in a Gamma Irradiator, which the University's Department of Chemistry bought in 1968 from Canada and which had been in disuse since 1985.
The radioactive material was found in a metal scrap shop in the Mayapuri district of the city. The shop owner and his assistants are among those affected by exposure to it.
The irradiator was sold off with other unused material in an auction on 26 February this year, when it was bought by a scrap dealer in Mayapuri, Harcharan Singh Bhola. He, in turn, removed the iron part from the cell and sold the lead to another scrap dealder, Giriraj Gupta.
Gupta further dismantled the irradiator and sold the lead to other scrap dealers but keeping part of the iron scrap himself. This was removed by Bhola reached Deepak Jain through Rajender, who died on Monday.
On April 8 the city authorities were informed about people suffering burns and other symptoms associated with exposure to a radioactive source.
Experts from the Department of Atomic Energy and the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) were ultimately able to recover and secure eight sources of different intensity from the shop as well as a godown owned by Jain. Two more sources were later recovered from the shop of Gupta.
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