Bureaucracy-scarred Army gunner wages war against `indifference’

Calculators invented by him bear data for the positions of the sun in the day and nine stars at night. The stars have been so identified that two of the nine will be present on the East and West at a given time. The data predict the positions of the sun, the pole star and nine other stars per micro second. Ramjilal spent Rs 4,500 each for thenine calculators which in 1955 was a big sum as he was only a Lieutenant then. Ramjilal handed over the inventions to the Army in 1955. Exhaustive testing found the inventions useful and Army correspondence attest the importance of these calculators.

His inventions include the sun/stars bearing table, calculator grid convergence, calculator Azimuth Polaris star, Orionis star, Canis Minor Star, Leonis star, Bootis star, Aquila star, Pegasus star, Taurus star, Cetus star and Ophiuchus Star. He retired from service as Major on November 11, 1978, well after his inventions were put to use. Time and again his reminders, the first one was in 1973 and the last dated December 3, 1999 for an interview with President, have fallen on deaf ears. The Major, now 78, said “I do not care for the consequences of circumventing the Official Secrets Act which has denied me judicial intervention”. When he had approached the Supreme Court in 1986, the court had in turn come down severely on the OSA.

He has been advised to`refrain from such infructuous correspondence’ in a letter from Southern Command headquarters in Pune dated November 2, 1999. Ramjilal underwent two cardiac surgeries and is a neuro patient who has a clot in the brain. Due to the clot, his brain blacks out and he is forbidden to stay out at night.