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| Saturday, 4 December 2004 |
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Veerappan: Death of an outlaw by Stephen David in Dharmapuri After years of evading their dragnet, frustrated policemen had said in jest that the only thing that could ever catch up with Koose Muniswamy Veerappan was age. But with him turning 52 this year it would still be a long wait.
As his body lay on a stark stone slab in a hospital mortuary at Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu it was apparent that Veerappan death was a far cry from the images that were flashed of him when the dreaded bandit was alive. Gone was his lush trademark moustache. In its place was a dropping remnant that in many ways symbolised his dwindling fortunes in recent years. Next to him lay the bodies of his three key gang members who had also been shot dead in the encounter on the road near Papparapatti, a hamlet 10 km south of Dharmapuri. Veerappan circa 2004 was a pale shadow of what he was four years ago. In July 2000 in his most daring abduction ever, he took as hostage Kannada matinee idol Rajkumar. He brought both the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu governments to their knees before releasing the filmstar after months in captivity. Karnataka DGP, C. Dinakar even alleged that a ransom of Rs. 20 crore had been paid to Veerappan by the office of the State Chief Minister, S. M. Krishna. In 2002 Veerappan followed that up by taking hostage H. Nagappa, a former Karnataka Minister. He shocked the country by killing the politician when his demands were not met. It led Krishna to even compare the difficulty of hunting down Veerappan with that of Osama bin Laden. The reward money that the two states offered for the capture of Veerappan and his gang members was upped to Rs. 5.5 crore. By then, his record of killings had mounted to an astounding 124 people. In his reign of 30 years in the dense tropical jungles at the confluence of the Western and Eastern Ghats in South India, he had killed over 200 elephants for their tusks. As the tusker population declined alarmingly because of his strike rate and ivory sale was banned, he began to strip the forests bare by hacking expensive sandalwood trees and selling them for a small fortune. At his peak in the early '90s, with 100 gang members, Veerappan ruled the southern jungles ruthlessly mowing down police officers and forest officials crossing his path. He had even developed a Robin Hood image by distributing some of his booty among village folk. In the pantheon of Indian dacoits, not even Malkhan Singh or Phoolan Devi earned the nationwide notoriety that Veerappan had. He had also gained a certain degree of political clout by buying influence with his money. It was part of the reason why he was able to successfully evade arrest for so long. However when K. Vijay Kumar took over as chief of the STF in October 2003 the bandit had lot much of his legendary skills. This was not the first time that Kumar, an Additional Director General of Police would be matching wits with Veerappan. Way back in 1993, when the outlaw was at his most destructive, Kumar spent many months tracking him down. Late last year when he took charge again, Kumar was careful to learn from his past mistakes. "The only way Veerappan was able to have his free writ running then was because of human intelligence and that is exactly what we applied to net the criminal," he told India Today soon after gunning down the bandit. So instead of simply a show of force, Kumar launched a covert operation codenamed cocoon to infiltrate Veerappan's inner circle. He appointed his Deputy Senthamarai Kannan, SP Intelligence, as head of the core team that would penetrate the hamlets and villages around Veerappan's operational areas. So team members posing as bus conductors, odd-job men and traders soon merged with the local people. Some STF men lived in disguise for weeks on end and were even able to mingle with Veerappan's gang members. They soon managed to ferret out critical information about the bandit's medical condition. He was known to be a chronic diabetic. But of late he was said to be suffering from eye problems. This had forced him to seek medical aid outside his jungle hideouts. The other eye too was clouding over with cataract. It provided the STF an opportunity to lure him out in the open.
There was a power struggle on between Govindan and Gowda. Of late, Govindan also nursed ambitions of taking over the mantle from Veerappan. So desperate was the bandit to expand his team that he had decided to recruit some men from the splinter groups of Tamil extremist organisations like the Tamil Nadu Liberation Army (TNLA). The other key pitfall Kumar avoided was to run into conflict with his Karnataka counterparts in the STF. Although it was meant to be a joint force they rarely shared intelligence which allowed Veerappan to successfully stay out of reach. If he found the Tamil Nadu STF closing in on him, he would slip into Karnataka. This time around the two teams decided to act as one. Karnataka STF Chief Jyoti Prakash Mirji told India Today: "We did not operate as Karnataka or Tamil Nadu STF. We did not even have a language problem as we were focused on ending the Veerappan menace." The STF team had learned that Veerappan knew the 6,000 sq. km. of jungle in which he operated better than anyone. So they evolved a plan to draw him out of his lair. The strategy was to inundate with troops the Veerappan-dominated areas in the Sathyamangalam (Tamil Nadu) and Kollegal (Karnataka) forests. It forced Veerappan and his gang to move out from denser jungle to sparser ones where information about his movements was more easily gathered. They then set the trap for him. They knew Veerappan needed medical treatment for his right eye desperately. By then they had an STF man in contact with the core gang members who offered to arrange an ambulance for their leader to travel incognito for treatment. The date was fixed for either Monday, October 18 or Wednesday, October 20 (Veerappan liked to travel only on Mondays or Wednesdays). On October 18 at around 10 p.m. after ascertaining from aides that the driver was trustworthy. Veerappan agreed to board the ambulance somewhere near the Dharmapuri Jungles. Dressed in white, he is said to have trimmed his moustache to avoid easy identification. Apart from carrying Rs. 3.5 lakh in cash the gang was armed with two AK-47 rifles, a 6.63 self-loading rifle and hand grenades. The ambulance, a white tempo traveller bearing the name, S. K. S. Hospital, Salem was being driven by an STF constable in disguise. Kumar decided to waylay the ambulance on a lonely stretch of road near Papparapatti village, about 8 km from Dharmapuri. A truck with 20 STF men in civilian clothes was parked on the road. About 10m behind was a matador van with 10 STF personnel. When the ambulance arrived on the spot, the STF driver stopped and fled. Kumar twice used a megaphone to tell the bandits to surrender. But Veerappan and his gang opened fire. The STF men hit back by lobbying a grenade inside the ambulance and then opened fire killing all four of them. It is not clear whether Veerappan fell to STF bullets or shot himself. Doubts are also being raised about the details of the encounter. Just how big the kill was became evident the next day when 20,000 people lined up on the main road in front of the General Hospital at Dharmapuri to catch a glimpse of the notorious smuggler. Veerappan's wife Muthulakshmi claimed the body. Instead of cremation, the police ordered that it be buried at Moolakadu near Mettur. They could always exhume the body in case there was a controversy over his identity or the way he died. The Tamil Nadu STF personnel were rewarded handsomely by delighted Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa. She announced promotions of each of them apart from a Rs. 3 lakh cash award and a plot of land at their hometowns. With the elimination of the rest of his gang members, the Veerappan saga appears to have come to an end. It even forced Bollywood film maker Ram Gopal Varma, who was producing a film called Let's Catch Veerappan, to change the movie's title. Several mysteries though remain unsolved. A probe is possibly needed into his political connections and the nexus that had helped him stay alive for so long. There is also the puzzle of where Veerappan stashed away his booty of over Rs. 10 crore. Police suspect that he has buried wads of currency notes at his various hideouts in the jungles. It may trigger an other unprecedented hunt - this time for the treasure left behind by India's most notorious criminal." With Arun Ram, Courtsey India Today
K. Vijay Kumar - his best shot
Now we know he means what he says. Less than a year after he was transferred to Head the Special Task Force (STF), Kumar lived upto his image in the most valiant manner, leading "Operation Cocoon" that killed notorious outlaw Veerappan on October 18. A 1975 batch IPS officer from the Tamil Nadu cadre, Kumar has made sure that he was always in the thick of action. He headed the Special Security Group of Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa in 1992. When the STF was formed in 1993 to catch Veerappan, the then STF head Walter Dawaram wanted Kumar to assist him. After the change of government in Tamil Nadu, STF activities were toned down. Kumar was called to participate in the BSF operations against terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir. When Jayalalithaa returned to power in 2001, Kumar was made the Chennai city police commissioner. With the gunning down of Venkatesa Pannayar, a strongman of the south with criminal antecedents, in September 2003, pressure was building on his removal as commissioner. The media had then lamented that he had been "shunted" to the post of chief of STF. Kumar set about his mission with determination and a willingness to learn from his mistakes. Dawaram, his predecessor, was no less an officer when it came to courage and fighting spirit, but Kumar was just more discerning. If the STF under Dawaram became a terror among the tribals, who in turn were helping Veerappan, Kumar's effort was to win over these people and cut off Veerappan's supply line of material and information. Dawaram always believed he could take on the bandit in his territory. Kumar was perhaps the first STF chief to get an informer planted in the bandit's inner circle and devise ways to bring Veerappan out of the jungle and trap him in a terrain where the STF had an upper hand. What makes this 52-year-old officer with a passion for fitness and caps a respected figure in the uniformed services is his ability to lead from the front. There is a religious side to Kumar. Hours after Operation Cocoon ended, Kumar dashed off to the Bannari Amman temple in the nearby Sathyamangalam forest area to shave his head. by Arun Ram |
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Produced by Lake House |
Last week though, nemesis came to India's most wanted criminal in the
form of a bullet through his forehead. He fell to a meticulously laid trap
of the Special Task Force (STF) in a plan hatched in the past year. It was
a grisly but fitting finale to the largest, longest and costliest manhunt
ever launched by Indian police forces.
The STF team also found that the years of battling police forces had
reduced the outlaw's gang to just three core members: Sethukuli Govindan,
who was 40 years of age, Chandre Gowda, 35, and Sethumani, 35. There was
dissidence too among the gang members that would prove of crucial help.
When a number of underground dons and criminals in Chennai fell to
police bullets in 2001-3, human-rights activists blamed the then
commissioner of police K. Vijay Kumar and nicknamed him Mr. Encounter.
"After all, we don't wear guns as ornaments," Kumar, who is an
ace sharpshooter, had said dismissively then.
