With the death of brigand Veerappan in a police encounter in Tamil Nadu's Dharmapuri district, a long and arodous era in criminality has come to an end in this part of India - nay, even the world. Not many criminals in the world in these modern times would have scalped 130 human victims, apart from the hundreds of elephants and thousands of sandalwood trees to his credit as Veerappan did. Nor had so much money been spent on the hunt of any single individual anywhere in the world, barring possibly Osama-bin-Laden, that too in the months and years after the gruesome 9/11 terrorist strikes in the United States. <br /> <br /> Veerappan carried on his head a cash award of Rs 3 crores. That should be peanuts, considering that the Tamil Nadu Government had spent Rs 1500 crores on his hunt, and neighbouring Karnataka Government, another Rs 3000 crores or so. This, as also the Centre's involvement in despatching the BSF on the Veerappan trail for months together would put the annual budget of a small-sized Indian State to shame in terms of the money spent. In terms of efforts expended, it should be nothing but collosal, particularly in the case of the twin police forces from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. <br /> <br /> That way, more reams of paper had similarly been used up, and more television news time spared for him, particularly in the southern States, and even in the rest of the country than on any other individual, possibly including Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale of the 'Khalistan fame'. While Bhindranwale had an ideological angle to his terrorist exploits, Veerappan was plain and simple criminal evading the police forces that wanted him badly to face trial. In the end, he won in a way - by not getting caught by the police, where he had feared worse days in custody. <br /> <br /> Yet in all this, Veerappan takes with him the real stories behind the famed abudction of Kannada matinee icon Rajkumar, and the kidnapping and killing of former Karnataka Minister, H S Nagappa, that also set the tone for yet another round of political confrontation between the two States not very long ago. Though Veerappan did try give an ideological edge to his criminality by striking a pan-Tamil posture and demands at the height of the 'Rajkumar abduction', it did not succeed beyond a point. That he did manage to keep pan-Tamil militants by his side for that period, and aired their views and demands did mean something at the time, particularly to the strained relations between the long-term Tamil immigrants in Karnataka and their native hosts. <br /> <br /> Veerappan will also take with him the real stories behind all the elephant-poaching and ivory smuggling of the time standing in his name. So would with him be buried the stories of the sandal-wood cutting and illegal trading standing in his name. Though the increased police pressure on him made self-defence and survival his first, and later only, main theme-song for living, there were times when he did try entering politics in a big way "with all the money I have made". At other times, he would kidnap people, and free them reportedly for a ransom - though this has never been acknowledged by successive Governments in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. <br /> <br /> Though Tamil Nadu's AIADMK Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has since charged her DMK predecessor M Karunanidhi with paying ransom to acquire freedom for Rajkumar, in her first innings as Chief Minister, the State Government was believed to have kicked started the trend in this regard. A kidnapped police official, who was supposed to have been freed by his elitist commando colleagues, all but spilt the beans to waiting media men, at the time. <br /> <br /> Born in the tribal village of Gobinatham in Tamil Nadu's Erode district, Veerappan, identified with his prominent moustache, since named after him almost, young Veerappan made a living by lending a helping hand, and litterally so, to granite smugglers in Dharmapuri district. It was then that he discovered that there could be bigger money in abducting rich men and their kin. It used to be said in the neighbourhood at the time that local granite owners would oblige any messenger of 'Anna', or elder brother, with money, if he asked for it. <br /> <br /> Constant pressure meant that he would soon move into the adjoining jungles of the Western Ghats, whose 18,000 square kilometre area in the tri-junction of Tamil Nadu, Karnakata and Kerala, he would rule as a haunted ruler - both fearful and feared at the same time. Police forces from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka would often say that hunting for him in that dense forests was worse than hunting for the proverbial needle in a haystack. His near-biographer, if there could be any, in Tamil journalist 'Nakkeeran' Gopal, has learnt first-hand how Veerappan knew the forests like the back of his hand, and could identify the humming of every other bird and braying of every other animal in the forests - and how, thus, he could 'smell' the police and their informants from a distance. <br /> <br /> Incidentally, no other criminal in independent India possibly had so many negotiating teams (most often Gopal himself) waiting on him after every other act of criminality, involving abductions. Why, at the time of Rajkumar's abduction, the Tamil Nadu Government was even said to be preparing a posh Government building in the heart of Chennai, for housing Veerappan if and when he surrendered -- or, was captured. That the building, 'Malligai', had housed the headquarters of the CBI-SIT probing the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case said a lot. <br /> <br /> Starting off with the reported killing of a police officer way back in 1987, the Veerappan saga had continued till the Supreme Court itself came to be involved at the height of the Rajkumar abduction. That was when the court stalled the efforts of the Tamil Nadu and Karnatka Governments to free some 140 "Veerappan associates" held for long without trial. That judgment of the court went into legal history as the one in which the Supreme Court laid down the law on the objective powers of the Public Prosecutor to seek withdrawal of criminal cases, without the subjective influence of the prosecuting Government. <br /> <br /> Yet, the fact also remains that no other criminal in Veerappan's league had caused so much pressure on the dependent population, who were suspects as much in his eyes as in that of the police forces. Villages after villages in the 'Veerappan country', if there was any, had their men and women living on borrowed time, fearing a midnight, or even daylight police knock on their slender hutment doors, or gruesome repraisal by the brigand, who had landmined 18 police men, and hacked at least a few others to death in cold-blood. <br /> <br /> The end of the Veerappan saga should now justify the posting of Tamil Nadu ADGP, K Vijayakumar, to what since became a sensitive posting all over again -- that too, only with the former's killing. Once considered a prestige posting, it had become a punishment post of sorts for senior police officials, who had not stood up to the expectations of the State Government. In the case of Vijayakumar, who had once earlier led the Veerappan operations, and who had served as an IG in the BSF in Jammu and Kashmir, and as a Superintendent of Police in the Prime Minister's security detail earlier, it was a challenge to his prestige and professional esteem, after Jayalalithaa had removed her oncce-favourite police official unceremoniously, overnight. He has since vindicated his position, and so has the STF of the two States. <br /> <br /> For Jayalalithaa politically, it means a lot more. She had vowed time and again that she would have Veerappan captured or killed by the State police, indicating in the process that her DMK alternative rulers in Tamil Nadu were hand-in-glove with the brigand. She had even gone to the extent of alleging at one stage of the Rajkumar abduction that the DMK State Government had got Veerappan sent to Sri Lanka, to be in the care of LTTE supremo Prabhakaran. A charge that was proved wrong not before long. <br /> <br /> Yet, with Veerappan's death, her charge - officially based on the claims of former Karnataka DGP, Dinakar -- that the DMK Government had paid ransom for the actor's release, too would remain unsubstantiated, either way. It however remains to be seen if Jayalalithaa would be able to sustain the current political momentum until the Assembly polls in 2006 - or, would be tempted to advance the elections, despite her claism to the contrary, in recent months. It's another matter that similar claims and expectations had been made of Veerappan's imminent arrest even before elections earlier, but they had proved to be of little political value, to whoever was in poer in Tamil Nadu. <br /> <br /> With Veerappan dead and gone, it will be a task for the Tamil Nadu administration, and their counterpart in Karnataka, to ensure that they do not alienate the locals, nor tempt them, into taking the brigand's way. With forests as wide open and inaccesible as the ones that Veerappan haunted, it remains to be seen what action the State Governments would take without affecting their ecologies, to ensure that militant groups, of the banned TNLA, TNRF kind, do not seek to use the Veerappan country as their launching pad, training ground and hide-out. As long as they feared Veerappan, they had stayed away. If they were in his company, or in the forests, it was at his bidding. That situation needs to be watched, particularly given the revival of the Naxalite and pan-Tamil militant forces in the neighbourhood, and the temptation for criminals and terrorists wanted in this country and elsewhere, too, to find in the forests a safe haven for themselves, and their ilk. <br /> <br /> <em>* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.</em>
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