The Hindu : Front Page : Search on for missing uranium-based ash analyser

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Sunday, Dec 24, 2006
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Search on for missing uranium-based ash analyser

Special Correspondent

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RANCHI: The Hazaribagh police have set up a team to trace an uranium-based Ash Analyser stolen from the Coal Mines Planning and Designing India Limited (CMPDIL) complex on December 4 last.

The Hazaribagh SP, Praveen Singh, told The Hindu on Saturday the police had intensified the search for the missing equipment in Hazaribagh and neighbouring Bokaro district after experts from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) warned them about a week ago that it contained uranium.

Mr. Singh said some locals could have taken away the equipment from an abandoned building in the complex, where it had been dumped for over five years. He said the culprits would have assumed it to be some kind of electrical equipment along with the other things that they had picked up. The analyser measured the content of ash in coal.

He said the Ramgarh DSP had been directed to seriously investigate the theft.

The Chief Minister, Madhu Koda, has sought a report fearing that the radioactive material in the equipment had the potential to affect life in a radius of over 1.5 km. The Opposition parties raised the matter in the Jharkhand Assembly earlier in the day. An expert team from the BARC has been striving hard to locate the missing equipment in the region for the past few days. The theft was detected on December 4 when a staff sought to conduct a check.

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