The Dalai Lama has revealed he fears Chinese agents have trained bogus female devotees to kill him with poison while seeking blessings.The Tibetan Buddhist leader told the Sunday Telegraph that he had been passed reports from inside Tibet warning of the plot, using Tibetan women.The 76-year-old Nobel laureate said he now lives in a high security cordon in his temple palace grounds in Dharamsala on the advice of Indian security officials."We received some sort of information from Tibet," he said. "Some Chinese agents training some Tibetans, especially women, you see, using poison – the hair poisoned, and the scarf poisoned – they were supposed to seek blessing from me, and my hand touch."

The Dalai Lama said suspicion of Chinese interference in the search for his reincarnation after his death meant he could be the last Dalai Lama. A number of young Buddhist monks, including the Karmapa Lama, could emerge as the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, he told the paper.