Ramar’s Herbal Petrol:
Oil From Leaves?
⛽ A true story
In 1996, in Tamil Nadu, a man named Ramar Pillai made an amazing claim. He said he could turn leaves and water into petrol. He boiled herbs in water, stirred in a few drops of a secret liquid, and, after a while, there was fuel that burned!
He even showed his “herbal petrol” to the Chief Minister and other ministers. Newspapers called him a genius. If it were true, India would never need to buy petrol again.
But when scientists at IIT Madras and the Indian Institute of Petroleum tested his method, it didn’t work. According to reports, he hid real petrol inside his hollow stirring rod, sealed at the end with a plug of wax. When he stirred the hot water, the wax melted, and the petrol slipped out into the pot. Years later, a court found him guilty of cheating people.
Stop before you read on! If you were watching his show, what would you have checked? Write down your ideas.
🧪 Try It Yourself
You can’t make petrol, and you should never play with petrol or kerosene. But you can do the same trick with cooking oil, safely.
What you need
- 🥤 Three drinking straws: two paper or coloured, one clear
- 🧈 A little cold butter or ghee, straight from the fridge
- 🫒 A little cooking oil and a spoon
- 🫙 Two clear glasses
- 🌿 A few leaves (curry leaves or tulsi)
- ♨️ Hot tap water Ask a grown-up
- 🧑🤝🧑 A friend
📄 Download the worksheet (PDF)
Part 1: Make the “magic” stirrers
- Push one end of a paper straw into the cold butter, so that a small plug of butter about 1 cm long fills the end. Do the same with the second paper straw.
- Hold each straw plug-end down. Carefully drip cooking oil into the top with the spoon until the straw is about half full. The butter plug holds the oil in.
- Put the straws in the fridge for 5 minutes, so the butter stays hard. These are your secret stirrers, just like Ramar Pillai’s hollow rod.
Part 2: The show, and the fair tests
- Ask a grown-up to fill one glass with hot tap water (hot, but not boiling). Fill the other glass with cold water. Put a few leaves in each.
- The show: say some “magic words” and stir the hot water with a secret stirrer for about a minute. Then lift the straw out. Watch the top of the water. What appears?
- Fair test 1: stir the cold water with the other secret stirrer for a minute, then lift it out. Does any oil appear?
- Fair test 2: your friend stirs a fresh glass of hot water and leaves with the clear straw, which has nothing hidden inside. Does any oil appear?
- Now look closely at your secret stirrers. What happened to the butter plugs?
Before each test, guess: will oil appear, yes or no? Then try it and see whether you were right. Write your answers on the worksheet.
💡 The Science Behind the Trick
Why the plug melts: butter is solid when it’s cold, but it melts when it gets warm, which is why it melts in your mouth. In the hot water, the butter plug melts and the end of the straw opens, so the oil runs out. In cold water, the plug stays solid, and nothing happens. Ramar Pillai reportedly used wax, which melts at a higher temperature than butter. That’s why his trick needed hot water, and why it was so clever: the oil appeared only when the “cooking” began.
Why the oil floats: oil is lighter than water, so it rises to the top. Oil and water don’t mix, because water is more attracted to itself than to oil, so the oil gathers into a separate layer that looks as if it came out of the leaves.
Why leaves can’t make petrol in a glass: the petrol we use comes from crude oil, which formed from tiny plants and animals buried deep underground for millions of years, under great heat and pressure. Fifteen minutes in a pot can’t do that.
Scientists can make real fuels from plants, such as ethanol from sugarcane, which is mixed into the petrol sold in India. But it takes a great deal of plant material, factories and careful chemistry, and the energy always comes from what goes in. You can’t get something from nothing.
🧠 Think Like a Scientist
Even ministers and newspapers were fooled. They watched the show, but nobody checked inside the stirring rod, and nobody tried it without Ramar Pillai’s own equipment. When real scientists tested it fairly, the “herbal petrol” disappeared.
Ask: where did it really come from?
Then test it without the person’s own tools.
A real discovery still works when someone else does the test. A trick doesn’t.
🗣️ Now be the teacher
Ask your family: if someone showed you oil appearing in a pot of leaves, what would you want to check? Then run the fair tests together: cold water, and the clear straw. Ask them why the clear straw matters. (The performer must not control the equipment.)
Make It a Fair Test · Popular Isn’t Proof · The Simplest Explanation
For parents and teachers
- Safety: use cooking oil only. Never use petrol, kerosene or any other fuel, and never set anything alight. An adult should handle the hot water: hot tap water is enough, and boiling water is not needed. Wipe up spilt oil straight away, as it makes floors slippery. Don’t drink the water afterwards.
- If the butter softens too fast: in a warm room, keep the stirrers in the fridge until the moment you use them. Ghee works too. As a simpler alternative, children can hold the oil in an open straw with a finger over the top, and lift the finger while stirring.
- Discussion: ask why the ministers believed it. (It was exciting, it came from someone confident, and a cheap fuel was something everyone wanted to be true.) Wanting something to be true makes all of us less careful.
- The real story: “The story of the herbal petrol fraud” (The News Minute) and “A story gone wrong for Tamil Nadu’s Pillai” (The Tribune). The hollow rod with a wax plug is described in “Herbal fuel” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary). In March 2000 the CBI arrested him, and in October 2016 a Chennai court sentenced him and four associates to three years’ rigorous imprisonment for cheating.
Inspired by the “herbal petrol” case of 1996, with the assistance of AI tools, and reviewed by our editors. — CHARVAKA DESK