Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Probe on into bioinformatics centre theft

Thiruvananthapuram: The police investigating the break-in at the Kerala University’s Bioinformatics Centre at Karyavattom on February 17 have now learned that certain academics attached to the research facility had been receiving threatening e-mails from anonymous senders.

Official sources said the e-mails were aimed at dissuading the centre from going ahead with a project involving a Japan-based drug research and development firm. (The centre is also involved in several other prestigious scientific projects, some of them funded by foreign firms.) Police investigators were trying to trace the e-mail senders with the help of Cyber Crime Enquiry Cell.

The police said the motive behind the break-in was either sabotage or theft of research data. The intruders had stolen electronic equipment and Rs.10,000 in cash to create an impression that their main motive was theft. Strangely, the “burglars” had searched the Centre’s library and also its password protected computers in vain for scientific information.

The police had lifted six “well defined” finger prints from the scene of crime. The police compared the finger prints with those working at the centre but could not get a match. The police were also investigating the role of two bioinformatics course dropouts who were politically active on the campus in the previous years.

Earlier, several politically motivated posters had appeared on the Karyavattom campus lampooning the centre’s activities and its association with similar research facilities in foreign countries.

The police suspect that the activists of two different student organisations, one religious fundamentalist in outlook and the other linked to Maoist outfits, were behind the poster campaign.

The police were yet to solve a similar mysterious break-in that had occurred at the Centre’s old premise in the early hours of September 11, 2007. The intruders had searched computers and rummaged through cupboards and shelves looking for research data stored in different formats.

They stole two video cameras and Rs.12,000 from the centre.

A fire had broken out at the centre’s laboratory in 2005, prompting the police to suspect that the incident could also have been a sabotage attempt.

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