INDIA: Police were yesterday questioning a 35-year old Indian businessman extradited from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where he was arrested for allegedly offering to sell the country's nuclear secrets to Arab embassies in the sheikhdom.
The UAE authorities had also reported Mr Akhtar Hussein Qotb Ahmed's arrest and deportation to the United Nations' nuclear watchdog organisation, the International Atomic Energy Agency. He was arrested and deported to Bombay on Saturday.
"We held the businessman following an oral message from the Dubai police that he was caught trying to sell Indian nuclear secrets," Bombay's joint police commissioner, Mr Satyapal Singh, said.
Mr Ahmed's arrest and prosecution would be possible only after the authorities had received the documents found in his possession, he added.
Officials said Mr Ahmed had so far claimed he was the victim of a plot hatched by business rivals, but security agencies and nuclear experts were continuing with his interrogation and were likely to bring him to the capital, New Delhi, over the next few days.
Dubai emerged earlier this year as the centre of the international nuclear-proliferation scandal involving the Pakistani rogue scientist Dr A.Q. Khan.
It was the port from where Dr Khan's underground nuclear "supermarket" shipped nuclear equipment before passing it on to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
Dr Khan was pardoned by Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf but he remains under house arrest in Islamabad.
The Indian authorities, meanwhile, were trying to confirm whether Ahmed's brother worked at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, India's oldest and premier nuclear research centre in Bombay.
According to Dubai Police, Mr Ahmed had offered to sell to Arab states nuclear information on India's atomic programme that he had obtained from his nuclear-scientist brother.
Dubai police commander Gen Dhahi Khalfan Tamim said Mr Ahmed, who was based in the Emirates, was detained following close surveillance of his activities over the past two years.
"Akhtar contacted Arab diplomatic missions in the Emirates and offered to sell nuclear secrets. But they informed the authorities and he was arrested and handed over to India," Gen Tamin said.
India developed a nuclear capability in 1998 but has repeatedly said that it opposes proliferation.
The Indian government is in discussions with Washington, which wants it to join the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) involving at least 11 other countries who want to forcibly inspect ships suspected of carrying illegal nuclear material.
India is hesitant about becoming a part of the PSI as it would violate the international law of the sea.