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THE DELHI Police have traced the Cobalt-60 found in the Mayapuri scrap market earlier this month to the chemistry department of Delhi University (DU). Eight persons who were exposed to the radioactive isotope had taken ill and one of them died on Monday. DCP (West) Sharad Agarwal said the Cobalt-60 came from a laboratory equipment called gamma irradiator.

“The device was among the junk the university had recently auctioned to the scrap dealers of Mayapuri,” Agarwal said. One of the four radiation sickness patients who were shown photographs of the equipment identified it, he added.

Preliminary investigations revealed that the gamma cell — the part of the irradiator that contained the radioactive material — had been purchased from Atomic Energy Canada Limited in 1968 and was not in use since 1985. DU authorities auctioned the irradiator along with other junk in February and it was purchased by scrap dealer Harcharan Singh Bhola.

He removed the iron parts from the cell and sold the parts made of lead to Giriraj Gupta, another dealer. Gupta, in turn, dismantled it and sold the lead to other scrap dealers. However, he kept an iron part he found embedded in the lead.

The iron scrap Bhola had removed reached Deepak Jain, the scrap dealer who was first hospitalised with radiation sickness.

The worker Rajinder, who died on Monday, had brought it to Jain’s shop.

The police got leads to the device from the report it received from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board ( AERB) on April 26. The report contained photographs of the source cage of the irradiator that was recovered from Gupta’s shop.

Gupta, from whose shop two sources of radiation were recovered, revealed on interrogation that he had purchased lead in bulk from Bhola. The latter, in turn, revealed that he had purchased a big machine with lot of lead parts at the Delhi University auction.

The university authorities confirmed that the machine Bhola had referred to was the Gamma Cell from the irradiator.

However, the police have not arrested anyone in connection with the incident.

“ We are investigating what condition the device was in when it was auctioned. We will question the university officials concerned and take action accordingly,” the DCP said.

Panic had gripped Mayapuri in the first week of April when some people suspected of radiation sickness were admitted to different hospitals in the Capital.

On April 8, a team of scientist/ experts from Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research, Delhi and the AERB among other officials visited a shop thought to be the source of the radiation and asked the police to cordon off the surrounding area. The police cordoned off the area as advised.

The experts said the radioactive source was apparently present inside the shop.

Subsequently, a team of radiation- safety experts from Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, Narora Atomic Power Station ( NAPS) and the AERB identified the source after a thorough search. The team could locate, recover and secure six sources of different intensity and placed them in the lead shielded flasks brought from NAPS. During the operation, the team recovered and secured two sources of different intensity from Jain’s godown.

Subsequently, two more sources were recovered from the shop of Gupta.