wo roadside astrologers who predicted the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK )candidate’s victory in the April 19 Lok Sabha election with the help of their parakeet but failed to foresee their impending trouble, were arrested for keeping parakeets caged. They were later released and four of their parakeets were freed, a forest department official said on Wednesday. Parakeet fortune telling is a kind of astrology practised in Tamil Nadu and it involves these trained birds to pick up a fortune card for the prediction.

The parakeet is instantly rewarded by its owner with a grain of paddy or a piece of fruit for selecting the ideal card from among a bunch of cards each containing the images of gods and goddess. And with the good deed done, the bird is sent back to its cage. While on a campaign tour on April 7, film director-politician Thankar Bachan, the PMK candidate for Cuddalore constituency, consulted two such astrologers, who are brothers, to know about his fate in electoral politics.

The astrologers used one of their four parakeets to select a card and read out the prediction that Bachan would win in the election. In the video of Bachan’s consultation that went viral in social media, the candidate could be seen requesting the astrologer to feed the particular bird and offering it a banana after the consultation.

The viral video caught the attention of forest department officials who immediately launched a hunt to trace and arrest the brothers for keeping caged birds.

On Tuesday, the forest department team located the brothers — Selvaraj and Srinivasan — near the Azhagu Muthu Ayyanar temple at Thennampakkam near Cuddalore where they were consulted by Bachan, and arrested them, a senior official said.  Four parakeets kept in two cages were seized under the provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act and were released into the forest. The astrologer brothers were later let off with a warning, the official said.

During the consultation, one of the astrologers released the parakeet from a cage and allowed it to pick up a card. And when the bird selected a card with an image of the presiding deity of Azhagu Muthu Ayyanar temple, the fortune teller interpreted it as an auspicious sign and said Bachan would win the elections.

In the video, Bachan’s supporters could be seen cheering loudly at the good news. PMK leader Dr Anbumani Ramadoss condemned the arrest of the duo and said it was unjust. He said such fortune tellers have traditionally been using parakeets to predict life’s events and the action against the two astrologers who predicted PMK candidate’s win was reprehensible. “People will teach a lesson to the DMK government for taking action on the fortune tellers who predicted Bachan’s victory,” Ramadoss said and wondered if similar action would have been taken had the astrologers predicted DMK’s victory.