Ultramodern assassinations Is India ready to prevent them?

By Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad

The recent death of Alexander Litvinenko in London by poisoning with a rare radio-isotope, Polonium 210, and the diagnosis that acting Russian acting prime minister Yegor Gaidar (June 15, 1992-December 14, 1992) was suffering from a disease “hitherto unknown to man and probably caused by an as-yet-unidentified poison”, have created panic among the security agencies responsible for guarding Indian VIPs.

There is a strong possibility that copycat attacks could be carried out in India as well, especially since radioactive isotopes are readily available from numerous nuclear installations in Pakistan, India, Iran, and North Korea, as well as from medical and scientific research institutions all over the Indian subcontinent. Moreover, the SAARC region has witnessed ingeniously executed political assassinations using extremely sophisticated poisons. Several intelligence experts are of the opinion that the air crash in which General Zia-ul-Haq and the US ambassador to Pakistan were killed in 1988 was caused not by explosives but by a neurotoxin which had been sprayed onto the instrument panels in the cockpit. Both the pilot and copilot are thought to have absorbed this neurotoxin through their fingertips and become totally disoriented. Another school of thought in intelligence circles is that Zia's pilots were made disoriented or unconscious by a toxic gas which was released into the cockpit, as had been tried in an unsuccessful attempt on Fidel Castro while he made a speech. In the Castro incident, the microphone was rigged to release a toxic gas while Castro spoke into it. There has been much speculation about the specific neurotoxins or gases which may have been used in the Zia-Raphael air crash.

While the Litvinenko case is the first reported instance of an assassination using a radioactive substance, this scenario had been described in great detail by an eminent nuclear physicist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in the 1970s. He enjoyed unfettered access to Indira Gandhi during the days of Pokhran I. He demonstrated to the then chief of VIP security how easily he could assassinate Mrs Gandhi without being suspected at all. He would announce that BARC had made a major scientific breakthrough in synthesising an embargoed substance denied to India, and present a memento commemorating this achievement to her. This ‘memento' would contain a few milligrammes of any of a long list of radioactive isotopes which BARC was manufacturing then—Cadmium 109, Barium 133, Cobalt 57, Manganese 54, Sodium 22, Zinc 65, Polonium 210, Strontium 90, Thallium 204, Caesium 137, and Cobalt 60. Exposure to this whiff for even a few minutes would cause Mrs Gandhi to develop cancer or radiation poisoning within a few days. If this memento were placed in an appropriate spot in her office, many of Mrs Gandhi's Cabinet colleagues would also be poisoned. This nuclear scientist urged Indira Gandhi's security detail to have her office and residence swept periodically with radioactive-sensitive Geiger-Müeller counters. However, in those laidback pre-terrorism days, it is not known if such screening for radioactivity was ever carried out. According to this nuclear scientist, India would be put to far greater harm if Indira Gandhi were made seriously ill rather than if she were killed outright. In the latter instance, a new prime minister would have to be sworn in who would be immediately briefed by the Cabinet secretary about the nuclear command protocol. But if Mrs Gandhi were made too ill to attend to her duties diligently—but not so ill that a new prime minister would need to be sworn in—then the working of the Indian government would be paralysed for months, and political, economic and social chaos could be generated by inimical parties. This poisoning-below-the-fatal-dose strategy was followed during the presidential elections in Ukraine in 2004 when President Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with less than 1,000th of a gram of dioxin. This was well below the fatal limit—Yushchenko's opponents would not be accused of murder. But the severe damage that was caused to all of Yushchenko's internal organs prevented him from campaigning. His opponents were apprehensive that his moviestar good looks influenced the electorate. The dioxin poison disfigured his face and caused lesions all over his skin.

A precedent for this was when the CIA, knowing of Fidel Castro's pastime of scuba diving, tried to infect his diving suit with a fungus that would cause a chronically debilitating skin disease. However, radioactivity detectors are unlikely to have saved Litvinenko since Polonium 210 is not a gamma ray but an alpha ray source, which is almost impossible to detect. In fact, Polonium 210 can be described as a perfect poison—it is fatal in quantities as small as 1,000th of a gram; it can be administered either as a powder or as a liquid into the target's food or drink; it is difficult to detect prior to being administered, the only practical method of detecting it being through a post-mortem; it does not harm the poisoner or bystanders since it does not penetrate skin; it can be easily carried around wrapped in paper or foil without setting off radiation detectors or harming the people handling it; and its short half-life of 138 days makes it difficult to investigate the crime after a relatively short period. The only problem is that just about 100 grams are produced worldwide each year, making polonium extremely rare. Litvinenko was earlier thought to be suffering from poisoning by thallium. Thallium 204, a beta ray source, is more readily available in several nuclear research institutions in Pakistan, India and Iran than is Polonium 210. Leading international newspapers like London Times, New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle made much of the fact that needles containing radioactive Polonium 210 could be purchased over the Internet from vendors such as United Nuclear Scientific Supplies of New Mexico for US$ 69 each. But United Nuclear countered that it would require 15,000 of its needles to accumulate a lethal dose, which would cost US$ 1 million. Since it typically sold just one or two Polonium 210 sources per month, an order of 15,000 would be highly suspicious. United Nuclear also pointed out that easily synthesisable chemicals such as Ricin or Abrin would be far more effective poisons than Polonium 210 for carrying out assassinations. Ricin or Abrin can be manufactured easily. Ricin is found in castor beans and is easily purified from castor-oil manufacturing waste. 1/5,000th of a gram constitutes a lethal dose, and no antidote has been discovered as yet. The seed-pulp left over from pressing for castor oil contains five per cent by weight of ricin. While the use of ricin was considered during World Wars I and II, its best-known use was the assassination of the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov on a London street in 1978. Markov was shot with a modified umbrella using compressed gas to fire a tiny pellet contaminated with ricin into his leg. Indian intelligence agencies have been warning about the possible use of ricin for the past few years, especially since more than one million tonnes of castor beans are processed each year in South Asia. Even though ricin is listed as a “Schedule One Controlled Substance” under both the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, several chemistry handbooks describe the methods of extracting and purifying ricin toxin from the five per cent level found in castor seed waste.

Fortunately, none of the major terrorist groups targeting India—the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizbul Mujahideen, Harkat ul Ansar, etc—are known to have any expertise in poisons or chemical warfare. But such capability is easy to acquire. The Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing must develop a comprehensive strategy to deal with threats of poisoning and radioactivity.