"Long Kept Secret": Senior ISRO Scientist Says He Was Poisoned In 2017

A senior scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has said he was poisoned over three years ago.

"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," Tapan Misra said in a Facebook post titled "Long Kept Secret" on 5 January.

He said he and others at ISRO had heard about suspicious occurrences but didn't know he himself would "be at the receiving end of such mystery".

"The fatal dose... probably mixed with chutney along with Dosai" brought on a two-year "nightmare" for the former director of ISRO's Space Applications Centre.

"I barely could come back from Bangalore and was rushed to Zydus Cadila hospital in Ahmedabad. 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," he said.

Dramatically, a famous forensic specialist is said to have told Misra that "for the first time he (the specialist) was seeing a live specimen of a survivor of assassination attempt with fatal dose of assassination grade molecular As2O3".

Misra claimed that security agency personnel with the Ministry of Home Affairs alerted him about the poisoning on 7 June; the poisoning incident is said to have occurred on 23 May.

What could have motivated the poisoning of a senior ISRO scientist?

Misra says in his post: "The motive appears to be 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 adds that he would "not rule out... a new modus operandi of adjusting seniority and clear me who was perceived as obstacle."

Misra also claims that on 12 July 2019 he was "poisoned with gaseous poison, probably Hydrogen Cyanide, which hypoxiates leaving no trace..." Additionally, he mentions "mysterious appearances of poisonous snakes" regularly over the last two years.

All the details as claimed by Tapan Misra can be read on his Facebook post.

Tapan Misra served as the director of the Space Applications Centre, a major ISRO research-and-development centre, from 2015 to 2018.

However, his career at the centre began as a digital hardware engineer as early as 1984. He was thereafter involved in the development of microwave remote sensing payloads.

He is a recipient of several prestigious awards and also has a handful of patents and copyrights and more than 25 papers to his credit.