Chennai: Senior Odisha-born Indian space scientist Tapan Misra alleged on Tuesday that he was poisoned with a deadly chemical on May 23, 2017, at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) headquarters when he had visited there to attend an interview for promotion. Misra hails from Koraput in Odisha.
“I have come out in public as I fear for my life post retirement. I am retiring this month,” Senior Advisor at ISRO Misra was quoted as saying news agency IANS.
“We, in ISRO, occasionally heard about highly suspicious death of Prof. Vikram Sarabhai in 1971. Also heard occasional doubts about sudden death of Dr. S Srinivasan, Director of VSSC (Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre) in 1999. Case of Shri Nambinarayanan in 1994 is well known. But I never thought that I will be at the receiving end of such mystery,” Misra wrote in a Facebook post.
“I was poisoned with deadly Arsenic Trioxide on 23rd May 2017, during promotion interview from Sci/Eng SF to SG in ISRO HQ at Bangalore. Fatal dose was probably mixed with chutney along with Dosai, in snacks after lunch.”
“What followed was nightmare lasting for almost two years…Severe loss of blood to the tune of 30-40 per cent through anal bleeding. I barely could come back from Bangalore and was rushed to Zydus Cadila hospital in Ahmedabad,” Misra was quoted.
“It was followed by severe breathing difficulty, unusual skin eruptions and skin shedding, loss of nails on feet and hands, terrible neurological issues due to hypoxia, skeletal pain, unusual sensations, one suspected heart attack and arsenic depositions and fungal infections on every inch of skin and internal organs,” the scientist added.
Misra said that he underwent treatment in Zydus Cadilla, TMH-Mumbai and AIIMS-Delhi over two years.
“Famed forensic specialist, Dr. Sudhir Gupta told me that in his whole career, for the first time he was seeing a live specimen of a survivor of assassination attempt with fatal dose of assassination grade molecular As2O3. Otherwise his experience was limited to cadavers,” he said.
Misra also revealed that one of the Directors of ISRO centres had told him on June 5, 2017, of the possibility of poison given to me. “Probably, I guess, he witnessed poison mixing in my food.”
“On 7th June, MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) security agency personnels met me and alerted me of Arsenic poisoning. I am thankful to them, as their info helped doctors to focus on exact remedy instead of scratching their heads with unusual signatures of my ailment,” he wrote in his post.
“It is a colourless, odourless, tasteless suspension and hence cannot even be suspected. It gets absorbed through stomach during food ingestion, kills RBCs (red blood cells) immediately to such large extent that the fine blood vessels are clogged, leading to heart attacks and strokes within two to three hours and the victim can easily be passed of as heart attack death,” the ISRO scientist said.
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