Veerappan: the story of a finished life

A unique retelling of a decade-long manhunt from the point of view of both the hunter and the hunted.

February 25, 2017 06:56 pm | Updated February 26, 2017 11:49 am IST

Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand
K. Vijay Kumar
Rupa
₹ 500

Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand K. Vijay Kumar Rupa ₹ 500

Just as villains can’t be villains without their victims, heroes can’t be heroes without the villains. Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand by retired police officer K. Vijay Kumar is part-autobiography and part-biography, as much about Veerappan as it is about the author himself. A retelling of the details of a decade-long manhunt by the Special Task Force from the point of view of both the hunter and the hunted, the book is unique in its piecing together of statements and anecdotes from active policemen, captured bandits, and stealthy informers.

“I wanted this book to read like a thriller,” Vijay Kumar wrote in the acknowledgements at the end. He has succeeded in good measure, using a variety of literary devices.

The book holds together two broadly chronological narratives: one beginning with a call he received from then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, in June 2001, inviting him to head the Tamil Nadu Special Task Force, and the other starting from early 1992, a series of flashbacks as he contemplates in isolation or chats with his colleagues about their encounters with the bandit. The two narratives merge towards the latter part of the book as the past catches up with the present.

The recounting of the past is, of course, fast-paced: all of Veerappan’s many dramatic run-ins with the law find a place, some of them in the words of Inspector Karuppusamy, described by the author as a ‘yogi in camouflage’. “He was the best man for me to talk to, to get a sense of Veerappan, including the incidents that had shaped him.”

 

Artistic licence

But even as he marvels at the life-story of Veerappan, which he believes had the “makings of a fantastic Bollywood potboiler,” Vijay Kumar recognises a problem that must have come back to him as he sat down to write this book. “So much mythology has sprung up around Koose Muniswamy Veerappan that it is practically impossible to weed out fact from fiction.” If his elephant poaching and sandalwood smuggling drew little attention outside of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, his kidnappings of celebrities and reprisals against forest and police officers saw him being held in awe by the national and international media. And thus began the legend of Veerappan that did not end even with his death.

Vijay Kumar can therefore be forgiven for investing his prose with an artistic licence. The working of Veerappan’s mind is sometimes laid bare as in a novel. Sample this from the account of the day of the fatal encounter, October 18, 2004: “Unusually for him, Veerappan was not very alert that day. In fact, his mind seemed preoccupied with memories and regrets. But his natural optimism seemed to resurface despite these dark thoughts.” On another page, Vijay Kumar writes: “As his men filed away, leaving him alone, Veerappan’s mind flashed over the events of the last few months.” And, also: “‘I need to hit back decisively and finish off these bastards once and for all,’ thought Veeraapan. ‘But how?’” Again: “‘Life comes full circle,’ thought Veerappan wryly, and then turned to the situation at hand.” The limits of Veerappan’s world expanded to the extent of the limits of Vijay Kumar’s language.

The decorated police officer does not hide his irritation at not always getting the support the STF needed for a mission as complicated as getting Veerappan in his jungle lair. At one place he laments that the force did not get helicopter-borne assistance until much later. “If only the STF had had helicopters and drone backup, then this march of the bandits could have been stopped in its tracks at Bodamalai and a hundred deaths could have been avoided.” That was in May 1993. At another he writes of a helicopter operation in 2001 that cost Rs. 70 lakh but failed because of red tape in obtaining clearances. “Getting the helicopter airborne for training purposes was easy, but for operations there emerged the need to take a long, circuitous route of approvals….”

Credible account

In his introduction to the book, the author says he has “deliberately blurred sequences, obscured details and scrambled timelines in order to preserve operational secrecy and protect the identities of people who were involved in sensitive missions.” But some of the changes are but a thin disguise. The book speaks of ‘Damani’, a “leader of a religious fundamentalist group”, whose help was sought to infiltrate Veerappan’s gang. ‘Damani’, who was lodged in the Coimbatore Central Jail on “charges of involvement in a conspiracy to carry out blasts in several south Indian cities,” was asked to tell Madhaiyen, elder brother of Veerappan who was in the same jail, that he would send some radicals to help Veerappan’s gang. For readers familiar with the name of Abdul Nasser Maudany, who was lodged in the jail at the same time, and who like ‘Damani’ suffered from several ailments, including weak muscles and bones, the jumbling of the syllables in the last name would not have been difficult to undo.

It is a moot question whether Vijay Kumar could have sacrificed readability for the sake of authenticity. Even so, Chasing the Brigand remains the most credible account of Veerappan, and, of course, Operation Cocoon, the operation that finally ended the life of the bandit as he was brought in an ambulance set up by the STF. The book might not serve as a full-fledged autobiography of Vijay Kumar, whose career included stints in the Special Protection Group for Rajiv Gandhi, and in the Border Security Force in Kashmir, and in the Central Reserve Police Force. If read as Veerappan’s biography, the book has even more of an unfinished look. But, as the story of a seemingly endless manhunt, as one man’s quest to quell another, this book is complete in itself.

Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand ; K. Vijay Kumar, Rupa, ₹500

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