The Indian army is making tear-gas like hand grenades with the world’s hottest chilli pepper, the Bhut Jolokia, as key substances.
The thumb-sized chilli, which grows around the banks of Brahmaputra River, has more than 1,000,000 units on the Scoville scale, 200 times hotter than Tabasco sauce. [News via Guardian][image by Mattandkim].
RB Srivastava, director of the Life Sciences Department at New Delhi HQ of the Defence Research and Development Organisation, said: “This is definitely going to be an effective non-toxic weapon because its pungent smell can choke terrorists and force them out of their hideouts. It would literally choke them.”
Btw, do note that capsaicin, the active component of chilli peppers which gave the burning sensation, has been used as a key ingredient in pepper spray for quite some time… so the chilli-bomb idea is not something new.
