By IRNA,
Guwahati, India : Police in India’s northeastern state of Meghalaya arrested five people, including a tribal village headman, on charges of smuggling uranium, officials said.
A police spokesman said the arrests were made after they found a packet containing some powdery substance from a village headman at Mairang in the West Khasi Hills district, about 40 km from state capital Shillong.
“We seized the packet from the possession of the village headman and took him to custody and later arrested four other people in the same case,” police chief of the West Khasi Hills district M Kharkrang said by telephone.
The packet bore a printed inscription of the Indian Atomic Energy Department.
“We are in the lookout for some more people,” the police official said.
Samples of the seized packet have been sent for laboratory tests.
Police officials are in touch with Atomic Energy officials based in Meghalaya capital Shillong.
If the forensic results prove that the powdery substance is enriched uranium and stolen from the Atomic Energy, then it is a very serious thing, another senior police official investigating the case said.
Atomic Energy department officials in Shillong were not immediately available for comments.
Police in May arrested five people for allegedly possessing a kilogram of uranium which they tried to sell at a whopping Rs 2.6 million with almost the same inscriptions like the seizure made Tuesday.
According to surveys by India’s Atomic Energy Department, there could be up to 3,75,000 tonnes of uranium in Meghalaya’s Domiasiat area – by far the largest and richest sandstone-type deposits available in the country.
The ores are spread over a mountainous terrain in deposits varying from eight to 47 meters from the surface in and around Domiasiat, 135 kilometer west of Shillong.
After initial operations, the Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) was forced to wind up mining in the mid-90s following a string of violent opposition from villagers and other pressure groups in Meghalaya, whose alleged emission of radioactive uranium was posing serious health hazards.
Uranium is an important mineral ore for making nuclear weapons, with experts saying the untapped reserve at Domiasiat could be a potential resource for India’s nuclear research programme.