Five-member gang held for trying to sell red mercury

Acting on a tip-off, a police team raided a hotel at Vennakodi and rounded up the gang members identified as Pandiarajan (24) from Dindugul, Purusothaman (38) from Nagapattinam, Ramesh (30) from Villupuram, Thangapandian (44), a former army staff from Madurai, and Kannadasan (44), a siddha doctor from Kotagiri.

The police said the gang members were trying to sell off the red mercury by claiming that they could be used in making nuclear bombs and to prepare medicine to cure cancer.

They said that even one millilitre of red mercury costs about Rs 3 crore in the illegal market.  

Salem City Deputy Commissioner Senthil told media that the accused persons had mixed some colour powder to mercury and showed it as red mercury.

The police also seized their mobile phones which had videos explaining the process of preparing red mercury. They were camping in Salem over the last few days looking for buyers.

Further investigationsare on to crackdown on their entire network.