NEW DELHI, November 27: The case of some 500 residents of Gautam Nagar slums in Hauz Khas taking ill on polling day is getting curiouser by the day, with investigators no closer to tracking down the culprits. Instead, the south district police said they found crumpled pamphlets of Janata Dal candidate Rampal Singh inside two of the contaminated namkeen packets.The police also retracted their statement yesterday that the poisonous element in the snacks was mandrax. The report of the toxicity test on the namkeen samples by Dr R.K. Sharma, head of AIIMS's forensic sciences department, today read: ``The sample has tested negative for mandrax, alkaloids, atrophine (dhatura) and bromide salts. The sample will now be tested for microbiological material.'' Dr Sharma has indicated that there was dense fungal growth in the namkeen. The micro-biological test report will be submitted tomorrow.More curious was the discovery of two dead pigs in the jhuggi this morning, with a small amount of namkeen near them. The post-mortem examination of the pigs were carried out at the NDMC laboratory in the Capital. Viscera samples of the pigs have been sent to the Bareilly Foresnic laboratory.Senior south district police officials pointed out that the pamphlets don't prove anything. ``Someone might have left the pamphlet inside the packets,'' said a police officer. Yet, he was at a loss to explain why Rampal Singh has not been questioned even 48 hours after the `discovery' of the pamphlets.Two residents of the slums, Om Prakash and Jamiluddin, have given statements that the namkeen packets were distributed by supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party. (Not surprisingly, Om Prakash and Jamiluddin are Congress supporters). The three BJP supporters, who provided the snack, have been identified as Badan Singh and his wife Krishna and Banarsi Das Pradhan. The police interrogated them for four hours yesterday, after which it was `established' that the snack had been given to them by two as yet unidentified persons. The three even offered the namkeen to their own family members.On the basis of the trio's description of the two mysterious men, the south district police have prepared their identikit and despatched teams to destinations - the police would not identify them - in UP and Rajasthan. No arrests have been made so far. More than a hundred people have been questioned.The namkeen found near the dead pigs today has also been sent for examination. ``The death of the pigs indicates that some miscreants fed the pigs with poisoned namkeen after the November 25 incident. Obviously, fungal growth in namkeen cannot kill pigs. So the fresh packet of namkeen contained a lethal dose''.
