Lucknow, May 28 (PTI) Eight people have been arrested from Ghazipur area here for allegedly selling what was suspected to be radioactive substance californium, police said on Friday.

The accused were stopped for checking near Polytechnic crossing here on Thursday and 340 gm substance, suspected to be californium, was seized from them, Police Commissioner D K Thakur told PTI.

During interrogation the accused informed police that the substance was used in cancer treatment, the officer said adding that it was being sent to IIT-Kanpur for identification.

"If it is Californimum, it can be wroth crores of rupees," Thakur said.

Those arrested have been identified as Abhishek Chakravarty, Mahesh Kumar, Ravi Shankar, Amit Kumar, Shital Gupta, Harish Chowdhury, Ramesh Tiwari and Shyam Sundar.

Police is trying to elicit more details from the accused to find out from where they got the substance.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)