The People Of The Fallout

Radiation Village?

• Khetolai is the village lying closest to the Pokhran nuclear test site

• Villagers, mostly Bishnois, say there are many cases of cancer in the area. Exposure to radiation from the blasts is an obvious inference to make.

• Many, including children, have died of cancer. Women speak of high incidence of breast cancer. Children are showing development problems.

• Even cattle aren’t spared. Cows develop strange tumours and rashes.

• Govt hasn’t cared to conduct studies in the region or provide succour

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“The army jeeps, the fatigues, the big trucks—these things always fascinated Neeraj,” says Ashok Bishnoi, a school teacher, in Khetolai, the village nearest to Pokhran, Rajasthan, where India has conducted nuclear test explosions. He is speaking of an 11-year-old boy who succumbed to cancer on February 15. “He wanted to become a soldier,” says Neeraj’s father Ram Ratan. “He passed away within weeks of a brain tumour being detected at an Ahmedabad hospital. The closest hospital in Pokhran does not have lab facilities to detect that.” This is the third cancer death in the family: Ram Ratan lost his father to blood cancer in 2002 and his grandmother in 2006.