India's ruthless villain of heroic proportions

By JUSTIN HUGGLER

A huge crowd gathered outside the hospital in the small, nondescript, southern Indian town of Dharmapuri yesterday.

Nothing much of note has ever happened in the hospital before, but yesterday people streamed to the town from all around, clamouring to see a body being held inside.

The public were not allowed to see the dead man, but still they came.

For the name of the dead man was Veerappan and for 17 years he had been the most feared man in India. There were differing accounts of the price on his head.

Some said 20 million rupees ($657,000); others said 30 million rupees. At any rate, it was a staggering sum in Indian terms.

Veerappan was an ivory smuggler, a kidnapper and a murderer. He roamed 9323 sq km of raw jungle, and hunted down and killed the police officers foolhardy enough to venture in and try to bring him out.

He is said to have killed more than 2000 elephants for their tusks, and later turned to the even more lucrative contraband trade in rare sandalwood from south India's jungles. He was wanted for more than 120 killings.

He boasted that he had cut his rivals into small pieces and fed them to the fish. In 1987, he kidnapped a Tamil Nadu forest official, and hacked him to death with an axe. He lured another official into his hideout with a promise to surrender, then beheaded him.

The severed head was placed on a rock as a warning to all those who dared to defy Veerappan. Government forces did not recover the head for three years.

For 17 years Veerappan was the most wanted man in India, but no one could bring him in. A special police task force was even set up to hunt him down, armed like a military unit with assault rifles and night vision goggles. That was in 1993.

It was not until Tuesday, 11 years on, that they finally ran Veerappan to ground.

His body was exhibited to photographers inside the hospital yesterday. Their pictures show the lifeless wreckage of a face India feared and thrilled to at the same time: one eye missing, the lids hanging loose over the cavity of the eye socket, and a neat red bullet hole in the forehead.

The huge handlebar moustache that had been Veerappan's trademark was, strangely, trimmed. Perhaps he knew the police were closing in and had tried to make himself look less distinctive.

With his moustache, his gaunt cheekbones and his insouciant stare, Veerappan was an image from 100 years ago, like a gunfighter from the old American West.

And India had as ambivalent an attitude to him as America has to Billy the Kid. In 2000, he kidnapped one of southern India's most popular film stars, Rajkumar, and held him for 108 days in the jungle before releasing him unharmed.

The actor was 71 at the time, and while he was being held, his fans rioted in the city of Bangalore.

But if Veerappan was India's blackest villain to some, to others he was a hero. He inspired at least two Bollywood films. He was able to survive in the jungle because villagers brought him and his men food.

In his own heartlands, he was seen as a modern-day Robin Hood.

Born Koose Muniswamy Veerappan, he came to be known by just one name - Veerappan, meaning "brave".

At his height, he secured his jungle territory with landmines. When local politicians took advantage of a lull in activity from Veerappan to claim he had left the south and disappeared to Mumbai, he carried out a bombing that killed 22 people just to prove he was still around. He was finally run to ground because he needed urgent medical attention for his eye.

At least, that was the official version. The Special Task Force (STF) said he had strayed far from his usual territory and was on his way to get treatment for his eye.

But police intelligence had infiltrated his organisation and the ambulance he was travelling in, accompanied by four of his gang members, was reportedly driven by a STF officer.

Police surrounded the ambulance and ordered Veerappan to surrender, but one of those inside the ambulance opened fire. In the ensuing gun battle, Veerappan and three of his associates were killed. Nobody is exactly sure when he was born, but they say he was around 60 when he died.

He killed his first elephant at the age of 10, so the story goes, and his first man at 17, but it wasn't until the mid-80s that he came to national attention, following the killings of several forest officials.

In 1986 he was briefly imprisoned, but he escaped, killing four policemen and an unarmed forest official in their sleep.

He remained a mythic figure until some brave Tamil journalists went into the jungle to meet him and came out with photographs and an interview.

The Special Task Force was set up with a single goal: to hunt down Veerappan and bring him in, dead or alive.

The story is not completely one-sided. The police were accused of using brutal methods in their efforts to track down their man. R. Gopal, one of the journalists who interviewed Veerappan, said if the jungle villagers helped the police, "Veerappan killed them".

Then he added: "The saddest part is, if they do not help the police, the police will kill them."

Veerappan was renowned for his cruelty. He is said to have strangled his own new-born daughter because he was enraged at having a third girl in a row without a son.

Veerappan was bad to the bone. But the likelihood is that won't stop him becoming an even more romantic figure to India in death than he was in life. As the crowds gathered around the hospital yesterday, a new myth was already in the making. The body wasn't wearing Veerappan's trademark green fatigues. And what about the missing moustache? Some were convinced that, somewhere in the jungle, Veerappan was still out there, raising hell.

- INDEPENDENT