Eliminating Veerappan
Almost three decades after the dreaded bandit of the forests of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala had embarked on his major activity of stealing sandalwood and selling it — with the blessings of a host of politicians whom he benefited — Nemesis, in the form of the Special Task Force (STF) overtook Veerappan on Monday night. He was eliminated at long last when he was shot down by the STF of Tamil Nadu in the Hogenekal forest area in Dharampuri district along with three of his associates. This is perhaps what Veerappan deserved, considering his brutal ways of eliminating forest officials and STF personnel in the past. But as far as the nation is concerned, it would have liked him to have been captured, interrogated and tried, since this would have possibly exposed the political godfathers who protected him and delayed his end by at least two decades. The Tamil Nadu STF commander who is now so busy holding press conferences, might do better hanging down his head in shame for ! all his predecessors who failed to get Veerappan not because they lacked trained personnel or equipment, but because they chose to listen to their political bosses who wanted Veerappan to be left unharmed. The STF should also hang down its head in shame for allowing Veerappan’s sense of vendetta to be better than its own sense of vendetta at the elimination of dedicated police and forest officials and any number of citizens.
If the STF has given Veerappan an extra lease of life, so have the villagers around the forests where he operated. To most of them he was a Robin Hood of sorts, because of the help they always had from him. In turn, they made sure that Veerappan did not lack information that would allow him to escape the police. What they overlooked was that this is what all criminals are obliged to do when they are pursued by the police. What they also forgot was that Veerappan had killed over 150 people and over 2,000 elephants in his long and diabolic career as a forest bandit. That was the kind of price the nation had to pay so that a murderous bandit could save his miserable skin. That was the price the nation had to pay so that some political bosses could continue to derive benefits from Veerappan’s survival. And so the STFs of both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had obviously been told to soft pedal the entire operations against the perverted killer. One recalls how Veerappan beh! eaded Karnataka Deputy Conservator Srinivas in November 1990. In May 1992, he attacked a police station in Ramapura killing five policemen and fled with all their arms and ammunition. Three months later, his gang killed STF officers Harikrishna and Shakil Ahmed along with four constables. In April 1993, he triggered off a landmine blast getting at least 22 people in a bus killed. In spite of all this, the STF, which had been formed by then, was unable to nab the killer with all the resources at their command. Worse, when Veerappan abducted Karnataka matinee idol and four others on July 30, 2000 and held them captive for 100 days, the Karnataka Government even conceded Veerappan’s demand that some of his followers held in the Mysore jail be released. It was a writ petition filed by the father of the late Shakil Ahmed that invoked the Supreme Court’s wrath on the Karnataka Government for embarking on such a patently illegal course of action.It remains a mystery as to what might have brought about the change of mid-sets in the appropriate quarters that eventually led to the elimination of Veerappan on Monday. But two turning points may be significant. The first is that Veerappan himself had begun to get tired of being a perpetual fugitive. His pleas for amnesty and offers of transfer came around the mid-1990s. The media, which had always sought to project Veerappan as no more than just a sandalwood smuggler, also projected itself in the worst possible light by speculating on the possibility of Veerappan getting into politics around this time. However, the abduction of former Karnataka minister H.Nagappa on August 25, 2002 must have sent shock waves among the political beneficiaries of Veerappan’s criminal activities. They must have decided that enough was enough. But they must have obviously wanted Veerappan killed rather than caught alive. They did not want any of the skeletons in the cupboards tumbling out.! And even though Karnataka Chief Minister Dharam Singh says that he will conduct an inquiry into the involvement of politicians in Veerappan’s activities, we know that this will be no more than a charade. Veerappan’s elimination is good riddance to bad rubbish, but it would have been so much better if he had been caught alive so that we could have heard him sing about his political benefactors.
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