Chennai Corner

The Missing Kids
Bombs have been going off across India, and no one can deny that the society's starkly polarised. It is most obvious in Gujarat, but everywhere else, it's lurking under the surface. Thus when five youth went missing on July 22 -- the Bangalore blasts happened on July 25 -- the police sat up and took notice. Particularly because theparents themselves were afraid that their children could have been lured into some fundamentalist group.

Teenagers can be unpredictable, and for some even a mere scolding could proveto be the last straw. As seems to have been the case with Sheikh Navanullah (22), an ITI student, and his sister Usman Farhat (17), a twelfth class student,who ran away from home apparently because the latter was scolded by their parents.Along with them, among the missing five, was the teenage son of S Hyder Ali, Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam(TMMK) general secretary.

Hyder Ali says that the kids are attending a Sufi movement session but he does not know where that is. "My son was into a Sufi movement that focused on worship. He has no connections with any fundamental group." But unlike the other parents he has not got the police involved on his son's disappearance even though he has not been able to contact his kid.

Sheikh's father, who lives in a cramped accommodation at Triplicane, and his wife, Zubeida Begum, have approached the police. The police have found out from Shafique that Sheikh is very religious and that he could have gone to the Ajmer durgah. Sheikh's father says, "I have faith in the Quran and Allah will never let me down. I know about my children they will return back home safely." A fond hope that seems to be getting dimmer every day with the police not being able to trace them anywhere,and all their mobile phones seem switched off.

Wedding In The Family
Even as serial blasts were going off in Bangalore and Ahmedabad and panic was spreading in Surat with 21 live bombs being defused, Al Umma leader S A Basha was let out on a four-day parole last Friday to attend his daughter's wedding on Sunday. So was his son SiddiqueAli. The two have been convicted for their role in the Coimbatore serial blastsof 1998 in which 58 persons were killed and 250 injured. They are both serving life imprisonment, along with 41 others, in the Coimbatore Central Jail. A total of 166 were convicted in thecase. About a dozen cops shadowed both of them and police pickets were posted near Basha's house at Bilal Nagar in SouthUkkadam.

Terror visited Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu's premier textile city, after 19 bombs went off minutes before BJP leader L K Advani was expected to address an electionmeeting on Feb 14, 1998. The blasts were carried out in retaliation of the killing of 17 Muslims triggered by the murder of a traffic constable, Selvaraj, on Nov 29,1997. The TN police is credited with smashing the Al Umma group and even arresting the mastermind behind the ghastly attack, Abdul Nasser Madhani, who was the alleged link between the local terrorists and Pakistan'sISI. However, Madhani, who is suffering from various ailments, was acquitted of all five charges including conspiracy to carry out the blasts.

Tirunelveli's Tryst With Terror
But the question being asked is how did a town known for its "irutta kade halwa" (literally,'dark shop halwa') become the latest terrorist hotspot to be tracked in TamilNadu? S. Syed Nazim, father of Heera who is one of the prime suspects behind the plan to blow upthe Tirunelveli collectorate and the Gemini flyover opposite the Chennai American Consulate, is bewildered although he admitsthat his son stayed out of touch after he moved to the metropolis six months ago. He also admits that Heera was in touch with Abdul Gaffoor, also from Tirunelveli, who was a manager in a footwear store in T'nagar.Gaffoor, who was arrested with the ingredients needed to make an IED including a timer, battery cells, electric circuits outed the plan to carry outthe bomb attacks.

The mastermind behind this conspiracy, Ali Abdullah, was sitting seemingly innocuously in a dingy cell at Puzhal prison. He is anunder-trial since his arrest in 2003 with a rap sheet that should make any militant proud because itdemonstrates his expertise in carrying out bomb attacks whether it is Erode, Trichy, Madurai orChennai. When police officials walked into his cell, after receiving a fax from the Tirunenvelli police, heliterally chewed up two SIM cards and spat them at the officials. Ali Abdullah wasobviously not the only one working his cellphone busily to plot a heinous crime. Since then, 104 cellphones and 42 SIM cards have been seized from various jails in TN.So is a phone jammer the answer? Apparently not, because signal jammers that were tried in prisons in Gujarat and Chandigarhfailed to block mobile signals. Even cellphone detectors, which were tried in the prison complex, failed because prisoners outsmarted the instrument by keeping their mobiles switched off. So the answer perhaps lies in good old fashioned frisking notwithstanding a recent cellphone ad which shows a hot girl smuggle her slim mobile past scanners and frisking.

No Win Rajni

Rajnikanth might be a star in Japan, his cut-out might come up in theatres in the US and candies with his face might get sold to hype the release of Kuselan, but he can't seem to win over Kannada activists. For him it's a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't. When he came onto the stage amidst raucous catcalls at the Chepauk stadium this April to show his solidarity with the Hogenekal water project, he may not have factored in that Kannada activists may let their grudge spillover to mar the release ofKuselan. And that's what has happened.

Rajni has apologized to the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce for his remarks on the project, which had Tamil Nadu and Karnataka staring each other down till CM M Karunanidhi put Hogenekkal on hold. But Kannada Rakshana Vedike president T A Narayana Gowda is not satisfied. He wants Rajni to eat crow in front of him and his men. After all nothing like targeting a superstar to leverage publicity.

Not A Cameo
But brand Rajni is something everyone wants to exploit include the producers, Pushpa Kandasamy and G P Vijaykumar, and director, P Vasu. In the original Malayalam superhit Katha Parayumbol, a tale of friendship between a poor village barber and a superstar, Mammooty had a cameo. But inKuselan, Rajni's role has been fleshed out into 60 minutes for a film that cost Rs 60 crores to make. For the record, Rajni only wanted a cameo but the makers wanted to market it as a Rajni film. Maybe they had in mind thata cameo by Rajni may not get the cash register at the box office ringing as demonstrated by his special appearance in Anbulla Rajnikanth.