In an amusing claim, a US writer on nuclear issues, has said, of all places in Playboy mazagine, that India may have been the mysterious fourth customer of Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan's clandestine network of supplying nuclear technology.
Joshua Pollack, who writes on nuclear issues, said Khan 'provided the shortcut to a nuclear weapon' to India besides Iran, Libya and North Korea.
India had conducted its first nuclear test on May 18, 1974, while Pakistan did it only in 1998.
Pollack offers little credible evidence to back the contention, other than to point similarities between the centrifuges India uses in its uranium-enrichment programme and Pakistan's own centrifuges made by Khan.
Khan has admitted giving centrifuges and drawings that helped North Korea begin making a uranium-based bomb.
After he confessed to running a proliferation network in early 2004, Khan was placed under house arrest by former Pakistan ruler Pervez Musharaff.
The restrictions were eased about two years ago by the current government in Pakistan.