Packet sent to Bollywood star tested for anthrax
BOMBAY (Reuters) - A suspicious packet sent to the home of leading Bollywood sex symbol Urmila Matondkar was being tested for anthrax, an official said on Monday.
India has experienced a rash of anthrax scares during recent weeks but no sample has tested positive.
Matondkar, famed for her figure-hugging outfits and sizzling dance numbers, played an obsessive lover in “Pyar Tune Kya Kiya” (Love What Have You Done), the Hindi version of “Fatal Attraction”, released earlier this year.
“We received a packet with suspicious material from Urmila’s residence on Saturday,” the duty officer at the Haffkine Institute, told Reuters.
The leading biomedical research and training institute tested over 50 envelopes containing powdery substances from the western states of Maharashtra and Goa last month but none tested positive for anthrax.
A lab in Thane, outside Bombay, found “undisputed evidence” of anthrax in a letter to Maharashtra deputy chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal. But the Haffkine Institute tested the substance and found no anthrax. The powder has been sent for a third test.
Fears of germ warfare have spread around the world since the September 11 attacks on the United states.
U.S. President George W. Bush on Saturday called the recent anthrax cases “a second wave of terrorist attacks”. The number of confirmed anthrax cases in the United States is 17.