Dst To Give Pillai One Last Chance

After rejecting his claim as a sleight of hand, the department of science and technology (DST) has been forced to give the benefit of doubt to Pillai following his successful demonstration before Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu in Hyderabad early this month.

Sources said political compulsions in the form of support for Pillai from the DMK government in Tamil Nadu and the TDP(N) in Andhra Pradesh had influenced the invitation to Pillai to demonstrate his skills. Pillai has been promised land for a plant both in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

This time around we have insisted on supplying all the ingredients for his demonstration barring his secret herbs and some chemicals. The vessel for boiling his concoction will be as per his specifications and scientists will monitor every step of his petrol making process, a DST source said.

If he is a fraud it will be proved then and there as every step will be under scrutiny and we will make sure the vessel does not have a false bottom or the stirrer a hollow cavity to store petrol in, the source said.

Scientists had alleged that during the Hyderabad demonstration Pillai had put petrol in a vessel and topped it with a thick layer of wax. Upon boiling, the wax melted allowing the petrol to mix with water and herbs. Earlier, scientists at the IIT, Madras, claimed to have caught Pillai red handed while he was trying to empty petrol from a hollow stirrer into his vessel of boiling water.

A day after the DST said they called his bluff, a confident Pillai held a public demonstration in Hyderabad where he successfully produced petrol from water and herbs and used a transparent stirrer to prove the DST wrong.

The DST stands by its assessment of Pillais finding that it is nothing but a mixture of petrol, diesel and kerosene obtained from mineral sources and cracked at a refinery, not from herbs.