The mystery of Covid-19 origin: Was the red flag first raised in Delhi?

Reports have said that Antony Fauci was aware of the Indian research

Recent Western research and intelligence reports have sparked a clamour for a detailed investigation into whether the novel coronavirus behind Covid-19 was engineered in a Chinese laboratory from where it escaped, triggering a cover-up.

But long before the lab-origin theory gained any acceptance, and as far back as January last year, a clear red flag about the virus was raised not in the US or the UK, but in a laboratory at IIT-Delhi, where a group of Indian biologists detected four unusual gene insertions in SARS-CoV-2.

Their research paper — released as a pre-print (a publication that has not been peer-reviewed) on January 31, 2020 but withdrawn two days later — was the first scientific study that hinted at the possibility of the engineering of the novel coronavirus, as they noticed “something odd” when they studied the protein structure of the virus.

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"We identified four unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike glycoprotein that are not present in any other coronavirus reported till date. To our surprise, all the four inserts have been mapped to short segments of amino acids in the HIV,” the team at Kusuma School of Biological Sciences at IIT Delhi had reported in their study.

“This uncanny similarity is unlikely to be fortuitous," they concluded.

In the 22-page paper, the IIT team noted that the inserts — which are absent in other coronaviruses — are critical for the virus to identify and latch on to their host cells in humans and for its replication inside the body.

"We agree that statistical possibility of finding one insert is natural, two inserts is acceptable and three inserts may be rare but still statistically possible. But four inserts? What is the statistical possibility of finding four inserts and all in the spike protein?" principal investigator Bishwajit Kundu told DH.

A withdrawal notice on the pre-print server said the researchers "intend to revise it in response to comments received from the research community on their technical approach and their interpretation of the results".

After the initial brouhaha fuelled conspiracy theories, the Indian team rewrote the paper and tried to publish it in journals over the next four months, but were turned down by everyone. As other groups independently reported each of their initial findings, the IIT team finally shelved the project and moved to other areas.

After more than a year, media scrutiny and public ridicule, members of the team are still not willing to talk much on the controversial paper. But sources close to them told DH that the researchers stand by their original finding of 'something odd' in the virus in terms of the duration of its evolution and acquisition of gene inserts.

British professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Birger Sorensen recently grabbed attention by claiming to have discovered "unique fingerprints" in Covid-19 samples that could only come from “manipulation in a laboratory”.

Reports have said that Antony Fauci — the lead member of President Trump’s coronavirus task force — was aware of the Indian research, but chose to ignore the findings. Fauci is even understood to have described the findings as "outlandish".

But with the Joe Biden administration now ordering a probe into the origin of SARS-CoV-2, more voices demanding a close look into the origin of the virus are being heard.