CBI files chargesheet in 'herbal fuel' case

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, OCT. 4. The CBI today presented to the court of the X MM, Mr. R. Krishnamurthy, the chargesheet in the `herbal fuel- Ramar Pillai case'.

Besides Mr.Ramar Pillai, four others - Ms. R. Venudevi, Mr. S. Chinasamy, Mr. R. Rajasegaran and Mr. S. K. Bharat - have been cited as accused in the chargesheet.

The chargesheet has been filed for an offence under 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 IPC (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), section 3 (5) of the motor spirit and high speed diesel regulation of supply, distribution and prevention of malpractices order, 1998 and Essential Commodities Act.

Hailing from Virudhunagar district, the herbal fuel inventor was arrested on March 11 this year for alleged criminal conspiracy and cheating the public by selling industrial organic chemicals as herbal fuel.

Mukund Padmanabhan Writes:

The CBI has cited former Union Minister and TMC leader, Mr. Dhanushkodi Adityan, as a witness in the case filed against Ramar Pillai and others today. Mr. Adityan's (unsigned) statement to the CBI recorded under Section 161 of the Cr.P.C, details how he befriended and financially supported Pillai before discovering that the herbal fuel inventor was a hoax.

According to the statement, Mr. Adityan and two of his friends (Mr. Rajalinga Raju and Mr. Sundararaman) ``spent around Rs 7.5 lakhs on Ramar Pillai''. Roughly half of this came from Mr. Adityan's own pocket: ``I spent Rs. 1.40 lakhs towards the distillation unit, Rs. 1 lakh towards maintenance of his family at Madras, Rs. 50,000 towards his stay at Delhi and other travel expenses...''

The former Union Minister has been recorded as stating that in 1997, he made arrangements for the registration of a patent of the process of fuel production through a patent attorney, M/s De Penning & De Penning. Another patent was registered a year earlier after he persuaded three friends to help Pillai financially; in turn, this patent was registered in favour of them.

The statement also records that Pillai requested

Mr. Adityan's intervention in October 1999 to solve a dispute he (Pillai) had with Chinnaswamy over distribution arrangements of Ramar `herbal' fuel. Mr. Adityan, who by then claims to have become disenchanted with Pillai, had promised to intervene, only if Pillai was ``prepared to tell me everything about production and marketing truthfully''.

``Ramar Pillai and Venudevi cheated me by making me believe that they were producing fuel from a herbal source'', goes the statement. It ends regretfully: ``In total belief of the words of Ramar Pillai and Venudevi, myself and my friends spent money on them with a view to helping them and to updating their invention with the idea that we were helping a person who was going to attain world fame. I never thought that he would cheat me and cheat the society by mixing chemicals and claiming the same as herbal fuel''.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Southern States
Previous : 'Academic staff college, a successful movement'
Next     : Swamy seeks ban on DK