Eight held for duping people by selling ‘radioactive’ substance

LUCKNOW : After the arrest of eight people, the Lucknow police on Friday busted a gang that duped people on the pretext of selling a rare radioactive metallic chemical element considered one of the most expensive substances on earth, said police.

The cops seized 340 grams of the suspected substance and sent it to a Kanpur laboratory for examination.

Initially, it seemed to be a fake version of radioactive metallic chemical element, Californium, which is used in equipment for detection of explosives and land mines and cancer treatment, among other things, said Raees Akhtar, deputy commissioner of police (north).

The DCP said the gang leader Abhishek Chakravarty had duped one Shashilesh Rai of ₹1.2 lakh by assuring him a good commission if he managed to find a customer for the substance.

Other members of the gang were identified as Mahesh Kumar, Ravi Shankar, Amit Kumar Singh, Sheetla Gupta, Ramesh Tewari and Shyam Sunder.

He said all the accused operated together and made people believe that the seized substance is one of the rarest and costliest on the earth. The gang is suspected to have duped several people on the same pretext in the past, but nobody reported the matter to the police believing that they would get into legal trouble over possessing the rare substance.

The DCP said the accused were arrested when they came to meet one person on the same pretext. The police are interrogating the gang members to know more about their activities.