Arsenic is often used in cinema, television, and literature by individuals to surreptitiously dispatch their enemies. Tapan Misra informs, “It [arsenic] is a colourless, odourless, tasteless suspension and hence cannot even be suspected. It gets absorbed through the stomach during food ingestion, kills RBCs (red blood cells) immediately to such a 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 off as heart attack death,”
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientist Tapan Misra, a senior adviser at the national organisation revealed this years later.
He claims that his rationale for doing so is that he fears for his life since he has retired.
A promotion interview in Bengaluru on May 23, 2017 was the occasion when the said chemical was given to him in a molecular level suspension just after a heavy meal.
Tapan Misra was saved with lot of hardships and efforts by many medical personnel.
He rues the incident as also a “great shame of the country and our security apparatus.”
The motivation of the perpetrator is not difficult to assess.
“My contribution was in developing radar imaging satellites
— RISAT, considered a very high-grade technology. We can watch the earth's
surface in any situation, be it day or night, using this system. “This radar
system is 10 times costlier (than the indigenous one) if we buy it (from
others),” Misra said.
“The motive appears to be an espionage attack, embedded in the government set-up, to remove a scientist with critical contribution of very large military and commercial significance, like expertise in building synthetic aperture radar,” he said.
“A fatal dose was probably mixed with chutney served with snacks after lunch. What followed was a nightmare lasting for almost two years. I suffered from severe loss of blood to the tune of 30 to 40 per cent through anal bleeding. I could barely come back from hospital in Ahmedabad. It was followed by severe breathing difficulty, unusual skin eruptions and skin shedding,”
“It was followed by 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,” he added.
There are some details revealed by Tapan Misra. He claims that on July 19, 2019 he was asked for some unethical favour and in exchange his grandson would be accommodated in a best college in the United States of America.
Tapan Misra continued in his Facebook post, “We, in ISRO, occasionally heard about the highly suspicious death of Professor 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 would be at the receiving end of such a mystery."