M A I N   N E W S

Joint plan to nab Veerappan

CHENNAI, Nov 25 (PTI) — Tamil Nadu and Karnataka officials today formulated a new joint strategy to apprehend elusive forest brigand Veerappan and decided to intensify search operations soon with logistic support from the Centre.

Tamil Nadu’s Home Secretary Santha Sheela Nair and her Karnataka counterpart M. P. Prakash and the police chiefs of the two states held a meeting here as an immediate follow-up to their meeting with Union Home and Defence Ministry officials in New Delhi yesterday.

“In the light of our recent experience, it has become necessary to reorient our strategy and so we have developed a new strategy,” Karnataka DGP C. Dinakar told mediapersons after the meeting which lasted nearly two hours.

He said the Government of India’s assistance was in the form of men, material and logistics and these “inputs” would be used in due course.

“We have asked for commandos and sophisticated equipment to help us in operations,” he said, but declined to specify the nature of the equipment sought.

Asked if satellite imagery would be used to locate the bandit’s hideout, Tamil Nadu police chief R. Rajagopalan said “all that is a matter of detail. We can’t disclose it.”

The special task force of the two states would function under a unified command headed by IGP V. Balachandran of Tamil Nadu, assisted by Karnataka STF DIG Harshavardhana Raju.

“There will be a lot of back-up support to the STF command,” Mr Dinakar said, adding that the intelligence machinery was being activated.

Asked about intelligence failure in the past, he said one should not judge the future by what had happened during past operations. “We do realise the importance of the human element in intelligence gathering.”

There could be no time frame for an operation of this nature and would go on until the fugitives were nabbed, he said, in reply to a question.

On whether the operations would be plagued by lack of coordination between officials of the two states or “ego problems”, he said he could not reply to such allegations.

Mr Rajagopalan said there was no ego problem at all and the two forces would be working with “full coordination”.

“We are constantly in touch with them,” Mr Dinakar said when he was asked whether he had spoken to the emissaries who had secured the release of Kannada filmstar Rajkumar and other hostages.