NEW DELHI, Feb 20: As Rahat Fateh Ali prepared to return home from a week-loong ordeal on Sunday, reportedly by a circuitous Gulf route, he would leave behind a point to ponder.

The access to the Indian establishment enjoyed by JUI leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman and popular singer Rahat Fateh Ali has no comparison.

Rehman, in a strange ideological twist, has been feted and hugged by Indian prime ministers Manmohan Singh and Atal Behari Vajpayee in the past.

His latest mission was said to be to sort out differences between factions in the Deoband seminary with enormous political benefit to the ruling Congress party.

The party and the government happily overlooked the worldview he espoused.

“I do not support Taseer's killing, but I can understand why he was killed”, is what he told an Indian journalist at an informal press meet.

Rahat is a sweetheart of the younger generation of Indians who find an all-pervasive universality in his music that transcends political barriers.

That the Indian authorities should have picked on him for wrongly carrying a reported amount of $142,000 in currency notes has legal merit but lacks political generosity. More experienced and criminally inclined people have used the bustling hawala route as Indian politicians, business icons and bureaucrats are known to do.

The singer was penalised for another reason. He ushers the prospect of peace, not too different from the Pakistani cricket team that dare not play in Mumbai because certain ultra-nationalist “saffron mullahs” wont put up with it. The mighty Indian state looks on helplessly, or as some would say indulgently.

Peace activists observed that India had no hesitation in letting the American head of Union Carbide make good his escape when he had committed a heinous crime in the Bhopal gas tragedy. Similarly then British prime minister John Major escorted with him two countrymen who were caught by the Indian army filming an insurgency in the northeast.

Meanwhile an agency report from Islamabad said the beleaguered singer had telephoned Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik from Delhi on Sunday and 'thanked him for providing help during the legal troubles over the past week', state-run PTV said.

It said Rahat and his troupe were detained at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport on Feb 13 for carrying $142,000 in cash and cheques when they were going to catch a flight to Dubai for their onward journey to Karachi.

After undergoing harrowing investigations for almost a week, the singer and his manager were fined Rs.1.5 million ($33,000) each by Indian authorities to have their passports and other documents returned.

“It has been a tough week for me but I want to thank you for standing by me during this time,” Rahat reportedly told Mr Malik over the phone.

He also lauded the efforts of Pakistan's High Commissioner to India Shahid Malik during his detention.

“I'll return to Pakistan anytime tomorrow (Monday),” he informed the minister. The agency said the singer is expected to reach Pakistan at 2 am via Dubai. However, there is a scheduled PIA flight from Delhi to Karachi on Monday afternoon.