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Just Resting!

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Just Resting!
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SOUTH END-on-Sea has seen Indian politicians before. First it was Farooq Abdullah. Now, the mystery of the vanishing ex-minister has taken the Indian press corps to this classic Enid Blyton country.

Sukh Ram was finally discovered to be in his daughter's house in Southend—a little coastal town 50 miles east of London. When his son-in-law called the Indian High Commission to say he was staying with them, many journalists took the next train. The nearest they got to Sukh Ram was a glimpse of a daughter who looks quite like him. Many times that day Aruna Vashisht opened the door of the swank 148 Johnston Road house—just enough to politely ask the paparazzi to leave. Newshounds could sniff out no more than 'colour' details—the daughter's yellow salwar-kameez, the black Mercedes in the driveway, green sea, blue sky.

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The daughter seemed unperturbed, the father unhurried—he wasn't hiding, just resting. "He'll say something when he's in Delhi," she said. "That may be in a week or 10 days." Quick queries only elicited a final "I can't say anything". Tired of denying Sukh Ram's presence at her Thorpe Bay house, Aruna got her phone disconnected. A weary secretary at her husband's clinic robotically told callers the doctor wasn't in. Dr Vashisht is now complaining to India House of media harassment.

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At India House, the officials were reticent: "Entries into Britain are not on computer, so we couldn't find out when he came." And if the media was on a hunt, the CBI was on a friendly mission. An official statement was decidedly deferential: "The CBI has asked us to convey a request to Mr Sukh Ram that he should get in touch with the CBI at the earliest when he is in Delhi." Officials say desperate negotiations are being conducted between Sukh Ram and key people in India. He, after all, is only a part of the story.

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