Mumbai, Aug 26 - A radioactive device fell off a vehicle while being transported to Mumbai and was found three hours later by villagers near Pune, officials said Wednesday.

According to O.P. Singh, secretary of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), the incident occurred around 10 a.m. Tuesday when an industrial radiography device, weighing around 28 kg, fell off the vehicle near Ambedkar Chowk in Pimpri, on the outskirts of Pune.

A little later, when the loss was noticed, the AERB rushed a team of experts to recover the device.

'It was picked up a group of street boys and taken to a nearby village,' Singh said in a statement.

S.T. Agarwal, head of radiological safety at the AERB, said that the device with the radioactive source was found absolutely intact.

'It is made of heavy alloy shield, it is around 30 cm long, 20 cm tall and 10 cm wide.