Sept. 22: Malaysia’s deadliest crime story in recent times has a Chennai link. Allal Kathan Muthuraja was a film financier living with his pretty wife Usha Rani and three-year-old daughter Lakshmi Shri at Ramapuram close to where a good many of Kollywood personalities live. It’s a rented house and that’s just one little aspect amid the many strange things popping off the cupboard of the 37-year-old handsome man hailing from Shengottai in Tirunelveli district.
While the wife claims that Muthuraja has been a film financier, not many in the film industry seem to know the man. A more serious question arising out of the Muthuraja case is why did Usha Rani keep mum all this time though the husband disappeared after leaving for Malaysia in January on being called by his long-time friends and business associates Surendar and Padmanabhan, lawyer-brothers living in Selangor in that country?
Why did she have to wait till the two Malaysians were arrested by the police there, suspected of murdering over 15 persons? Until their arrest, the brothers were enjoying great respect among the locals but things changed quickly for them when they allegedly killed businesswoman Sosilawati Lawiya and her three associates. These victims had gone missing on August 30 after visiting the brothers’ farmhouse to discuss a property deal.
Sources say that Usha Rani had been in touch with the brothers from January. However, she has claimed in her many media interviews — local Tamil news channels fed gregariously on the story of ‘millionaire’ Muthuraja missing in Malaysia — that she was knocking on all doors in Malaysia to get information about her missing husband.
She had contacted the Indian high commission in Malaysia, complained to the Interpol and the Malaysian police, but none helped. In the same breath, she also claimed that Surendar and Padmabhan avoided her calls. It's big mystery why the wife did not press her case strongly with the Malaysian police by telling them that Muthuraja went missing only after his trip to meet the brothers?
Usha Rani claimed that she paid `5 lakh to a man called Suresh, who claimed he was from the Malaysian police and demanded a bribe of `10 lakh to let her speak to her husband, who was in his custody for carrying two kilos of Ketamine. He was then in a car with a few blacks outside the Beach Club Hotel, Suresh told her. She had arranged the part-payment of `5 lakh through a ‘friend’ in Malaysia. She would not name that friend. In any case, there was no phone talk and she was not sure whether Suresh was really a cop and her husband was anywhere around there.
Now, Muthuraja has a brother Kasi Viswanathan working in Russia and he decided to go to Malaysia looking for him in May. The lawyer-brothers went along with him to the police to lodge a complaint about Muthuraja missing but they withdrew that complaint after Kasi left the place.
Strangely, the brothers handed over Muthuraja’s suitcase to Kasi, saying that the man had left it in the hotel while telling them he was going out and would soon be back. He never returned, Kasi was told.
He brought the suitcase to Chennai and handed it over Usha before returning to Russia. When Usha Rani obliged the TV cameras for visuals of the contents of the suitcase delivered to her at the Chennai home, there were several sets of brand new dresses. But then, didn’t she tell the media earlier that Muthuraja had gone to meet the lawyer-brothers on a one-day trip?
On Tuesday, she took the flight to Malaysia to continue her search for the husband, leaving the little daughter in the care of a maidservant she picked up just the previous day through ‘Just Dial’.
Malaysian media reported that she visited the lawyers' farmhouse along with a friend S. Manikavasagam, a local MP and later they also met some senior police officials.
The media also quoted the MP saying that he would not want to disclose where his Chennai guest lived because he feared for her safety. But that was before the Malaysian police announced, on Wednesday, that Muthuraja’s case was no more that of a man missing but one of murder.
The suspense of the missing Muthuraja might have ended but the mystery behind the murder remains buried deep, may not be necessarily in that farm stream.
