This the last update I could find, hope this helps.
SUPERGREEN BIKE: When he rode his TVS moped 15 years
ago on herbal fuel that he had ‘invented’, his wife was dutifully
sitting on the pillion. Today, he lives in hiding.
Remember Ramar Pillai, the wiry self-styled alchemist who could turn
water into gasoline? With crude oil prices so volatile in this day and
age, the 48-year-old is the miracle man the world needs. If only he can
get his chemistry right. Nearly 15 years after his magic fuel was
exposed as a combustible cocktail of petrol adulterated with cheap
industrial spirits, Pillai is threatening to strike again. This time,
armed with wisps of organic chemistry knowledge, patent applications,
and dubious certifications from overseas scientists.
Pillai first shot to fame in 1996, when he claimed to have
concocted a cheap herbal alternative to petroleum. Scientists and
politicians alike were taken in by his demonstration, using jerry cans,
plastic funnels, thistle funnels, burettes and the like. The final act
of his PC Sorcar-like show would usually involve Pillai driving a herbal
fuel powered TVS 50 moped, with wife in tow. But he always kept the
formula secret.
At the time, a senior advisor at the Central Government’s
department of science and technology had this to say: “Tests conducted
by Madras IIT found Pillai’s petrol to be ten times more efficient than
ordinary petrol.” Impressed, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi
promised free land for Pillai to grow his wonder herbs and set up a
factory, besides financial assistance for research. Riding high on fame,
he even set up a dozen retail outlets in Chennai, handed out franchises
under Tamildevi as a brand, and began selling his magic potion for
around Rs 15 a litre, a good Rs 20 cheaper than petrol then.
In a country in love with folk heroes, Pillai’s was a compelling
story of farm-raised genius. From Rajapalayam in south Tamil Nadu, a
town famous till then only for a fierce canine breed, the ‘Tamil Edison’
had no formal education but plenty of spunk. Even this writer was
intrigued enough to try his herbal petrol, during my student days, in a
65 cc moped. While the fuel works, it also screws up the engine badly.
In 2000, after a spate of consumer complaints and tide of scientist
disenchantment, Pillai’s luck ran out. The Central Bureau of
Investigation arrested him.
For a man who was once the object of curiosity of an entire
country, and the toast of his home state, Pillai now lives in near total
obscurity. His home, a few kilometres from Chennai’s Loyola College, is
in a crowded chawl that overlooks a fish and poultry market. I
ask a vegetable seller next to his house if Pillai stays somewhere
nearby. He has no clue, and is surprised to hear the name. Its fame has
survived, but as a butt of jokes. Tamil cinema comedians have lampooned
him, and tricksters have been nicknamed Ramar Pillai.
The original Pillai lets me into his two-room shanty after some hesitation. His house looks like a mechanic’s workshop. A huge puja
almirah coexists with a heap of nuts and bolts, carcasses of computers
lie scattered, and there’s an under-repair air cooler near some large
plastic drums of herbal fuel. Separated from his wife and two children
since his arrest, he now lives with a friend’s family who he claims has
adopted him. I suggest going to a municipal park where it may be easier
for us to speak privately, but he says being seen in public could be a
threat to his life. Instead, he settles down in a grimy easy chair—to
explain how he was shafted by a corrupt and greedy system.
So what went wrong? Talking about cases against him, Pillai’s
manner resembles comic villains’ in Tamil films. Exhaling sarcasm, he
questions the competence of cops to frame charges against a scientist.
“It is the patent office that should have verified my claims.” He claims
never to have confessed to herbal fraud. “The politicians knew what I
had invented was very precious. They were upset that I refused them a
share of the commercial benefits. In collusion with scientists who were
jealous that a rank outsider had invented something like this, they
framed me.”
Despite all evidence of penury around him, Pillai himself looks
prosperous. He wears a thick gold chain around his neck and is looking
rather well-fed since I met him last in 1998. What has he been up to? “I
have read organic chemistry books from the BSc to MSc levels. My
problem was that I couldn’t speak to scientists in a language they could
understand.” He then whips out a dossier with copies of his patent
applications in India, and endorsement from Ivan Christensen, head of
laboratory testing at the Danish Institute of Technology. In a 2008
letter, Christensen wrote: ‘Ramar has demonstrated several quick methods
for producing bio-fuel. The fuel burned readily, and there is no doubt
that plenty of fuel can be produced at low price. For this reason, his
discovery is unique, and Ramar deserves some worldwide reputation, eg.
By Nobel Prize.’ Contacted by Open, Christensen acknowledges
the letter, but adds that he got carried away when he saw the
experiments first hand. “We all make mistakes,” he says, “I think it was
one of them. I’m afraid it is a blot on my scientific career.”
However, Pillai claims to be in talks with several governments in
Southeast Asia to obtain local patents and start commercial production.
“The Malaysians, for instance, have given me a lot of respect that’s
absent in India. I’m likely to get approvals from them in a couple of
months, and then you’ll see what Ramar Pillai can do.”
If that claim is not bizarre enough, Pillai says that it would
take little to create annual capacity in 15 days flat to exceed the
amount of petrol Indian Oil Corp sells in Tamil Nadu. But he needs to
stay alive, you understand. “Do you know the number of people who are
out to kill me?” he asks, with a touch of melodrama that wouldn’t be out
of place in a spy thriller, “I know they will get me one day, but I
have made such arrangements that within two hours of my death, my
formula will become public property and the names of all those who have
conspired against me and our country benefitting from my invention will
be out in the open.”
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