Senior Indian space scientist Tapan Misra on Tuesday has alleged that he was poisoned with a deadly chemical on May 23, 2017, at the headquarters of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) when he had gone there to attend a promotion interview.
"I have come out in public as I fear for my life post-retirement. I am retiring this month," Misra, Senior Advisor at ISRO.
In a Facebook post, Misra wrote: "We, in ISRO, occasionally heard about the highly suspicious death of Prof. Vikram Sarabhai in 1971. Also heard occasional doubts about the 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."
According to Misra, 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."
In his post, Misra also said that he was "bombarded with hundreds of threatening emails to keep my mouth shut", while he had barely escaped from a "massive explosive incident, in which Rs 100 cr lab was destroyed. This happened on 3rd May 2018".
He also alleged on July 12, 2019 -- two days before the scheduled launch of Chandrayaan-2 (which was however postponed to July 22) -- he was poisoned again, spent a long period in hospital, and is still under treatment.
According to him, two incidents convinced him that the mysterious people who are after him and probably going to hit him hard before his retirement at the end of this month.
"All the signatures point to deliberate poisoning of my mentally challenged son with Covid 19. The poor boy, who cannot even speak or eat or carry out hygiene activities himself, had to be hospitalized for 10 days, followed by months of complications," he alleged.
Misra also said that there was another attempt to poison him with arsenic in September.
Also Read: Conversation between Maneka Gandhi, businessman goes viral over treatment of animals
Expressing faith in the security apparatus, Misra, however, said: "But these mysterious men are much more equipped, trained, lethal and determined to snuff out living witness of the most shameful incident of Indian science."
"I put forward to Government, intellectuals and fellow scientists and my classmates and teachers, spread across the world, that all efforts should be made to keep me and my family safe and punish these mysterious men," he said.
source: IANS