Police have traced the origin of Cobalt-60 which was found in West Delhi's Mayapuri to a Gamma Irradiator auctioned by Delhi University's Chemistry Department.
Country's atomic authorities are investigating whether any source of radioactive Cobalt-60 is yet to be recovered from the capital where radiation exposure early this month claimed a life.
Police have traced the origin of Cobalt-60 which was found in West Delhi's Mayapuri to a Gamma Irradiator auctioned by Delhi University's Chemistry Department. A senior professor involved in auction told authorities that she was not aware of
the presence of radioactive material in the equipment.
The professor told officials of the Department of Atomic Energy who met her yesterday that she could not find any record about radioactive substances and assumed that it had been returned to authorities, sources said today.
She told the officials that as the equipment was not in use for 25 years and with no record about it, she thought the equipment was safe to be auctioned.
Sources said investigations were on to check whether any source of radioactive Cobalt-60 was yet to be recovered from the capital.
Experts recovered 11 sources of Cobalt-60 from West Delhi's Mayapuri. Sources said five of them were full Cobalt-60 pencils while the others were broken pieces.
Atomic authorities were examining whether any source was missing. The authorities have already initiated checking at the Mayapuri scrap market.
"We have checked the shop of Harcharan Singh Bhola who had brought the Gamma Irradiator and we have found nothing," a senior police official said.
The experts will conduct a second round of checking on all the shops in the scrap market during the nights to ensure that there was no radioactive substance in the locality.
Experts from the DAE had earlier scanned the locality using tele-detectors but had found nothing.
Panic had gripped Mayapuri in the first week of April when 11 people were admitted to hospitals after they were exposed to radiation. A worker in the scrap shop from where the Cobalt 60 was discovered has died due to radiation exposure.
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