Pondicherry

Feb 18 2002

Following N Rangasamy ' s recent announcement of bus fare hike in the Union Territory, residents of Bagur today resorted to road roko and ' took control ' of 10 private buses which passed by their area.

People gathered in large numbers on the roads and raised slogans condemning the hike. Meanwhile, students of Tagore Arts College in Lawspet also staged a dharna.

Rajnikanth announces a new film Baba

Chennai

Feb 18 2002

Perhaps spurning all offers and appeals to enter active politics, actor Rajnikanth has decided to do what .

The matinee idol has announced his next film, Baba, in which he would act in a leadrole apart from penning the screenplay and producing the film.

Ever since 1996, he has kept the entire State guessing as to whether he would plunge into politics.

And from time to time, he had appeared in television channels during election times, exhorting people to vote for a particular coalition. In the meantime, he also reduced his film commitments.

And after his last release Padayappa in 1999, he went into a prolonged hibernation. This obvious by lead to lot of reports and conjectures. There were even reports that he was quitting films altogether and taking sanyasam.

In a statement, Rajnikanth announced that he would act in the film Baba, for which he is writing the script and the story (incidentally, based on a real life incident). The statement further said that the movie would be directed by Suresh Krissna, who has previously given three successful films with Rajnikanth Annamalai, Veera and Badsha.

V A Durai would be the executive producer for the film, he said. It may be noted that Durai had himself produced a few films recently including Ennama Kannu, Lovely and Vivaramana Aalu.

However, the question that is doing the rounds is ' who will star opposite him ' . According to industry grapevine former Miss World Aishwarya Rai would be cast opposite to Rajnikanth in the film and A R Rahman would score the music.

It is also to be seen whether Baba will have political overtones as did his last three films.

Data processing centre Managing Director arrested

Coimbatore

Feb 18 2002

A self-styled managing director of a fake data processing centre was arrested for allegedly defrauding members of the public to the tune of nearly Rs 16 crore on the promise of providing them data conversion jobs.

City police commissioner Narinder Pal Singh told mediapersons today that the arrest was made last night at the MD’s father-in-law's house in Kangeyam, where he had gone to see his children.

On the basis of the confession made by the accused Arun Chinnasamy, police recovered two cars, 2,500 processed floppies, 180 unprocessed CDs, US travellers cheques, Nigerian and Kenyan currencies, Rs 2 lakh worth fixed deposit receipts, demand drafts worth Rs 2.5 lakh and two counting machines, all worth Rs 30 lakh, Singh said.

Chinnasamy was absconding for the last few months after the crackdown on his fake centre, ATM Enterprises (India) Ltd, following complaints of cheating and forgery. The police had frozen his bank accounts to the tune of Rs 69 lakh besides recovering Rs 50.64 lakh in cash earlier.

It was also revealed during interrogation that he had contact with Gopalakrishnan and his brother in Bangalore, who had asked him to purchase shares in a Chennai-based company to the value of Rs 3 crore from the defrauded money, Singh said, adding that the police were trying to nab Gopalakrishnan after collecting evidence.

The accused and others had entered into a criminal conspiracy and cheated the public by using the forged and fabricated documents by way of illegal money circulation from February 2001 to January 2002.

It was also found through tangible and documentary evidences that the accused and others were involving themselves in circulating false data among franchisees, which they claimed as real data received from genuine foreign and Indian companies, Singh said.

However, the CDs containing telephone numbers and addresses were procured by the accused for this illegal data processing from a leading book company at Bangalore, Delhi and other places. A few more arrests were likely in this case.

Fearing arrest, the accused had filed anticipatory bail petitions in the sessions court, Coimbatore, and the Madras High Court which, however, were rejected.

Singh said investigation was now focused on recovering the money from various other persons at Bangalore, Delhi and in the city, so that the lost money could be paid to the gullible public, as per the law through the court.

Later, speaking to reporters in the presence of police officials, the accused claimed that he was 'cheated' by the duo from Bangalore.