Decoding mystique of Veerappan

Parbina Rashid

IT starts with a good-girl-falling-hard-for-a-bad-boy kind of love story. She was 15 and he was 39. She loved his notoriety and his moustache. One day, he caught her admiring him as he walked with his gun slung over his shoulder in his trademark style, leading a group of men. He called out her name and told her about his intention to marry her. He said that if she refused, he would never even look at any other woman in his life. Her heart melted and she said yes. The year was 1989.

That’s Muthulakshmi and Veerappan’s love story. The one she so fondly recalls to the interviewer in Selvamani Selvaraj’s docu-series, ‘The Hunt for Veerappan’.

Though their love never fizzled out (she admits that she was addicted to him and he, on his part, was absolutely loyal to her), life soon turned into a nightmare for her and the state machinery. Veerappan, who hailed from Gopinatham, a village in Karnataka bordering Tamil Nadu, went on a killing spree in-between, poaching more than 1,000 elephants and smuggling tonnes of sandalwood during his 36 years as an active bandit.

On record, he killed 184 persons, including police personnel and forest officials. The long battle to capture Veerappan cost the governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka over Rs 100 crore.

In the docu-series, his story comes to life through people who knew him directly or indirectly. Starting with Muthulakshmi, the series presents insightful inputs from investigative journalist Sunaad; DFO, Karnataka, BK Singh; super cops like Ashok Kumar from the Karnataka Special Task Force (STF) and K Vijay Kumar, Tamil Nadu STF chief; Anburaj and Mahalingam, members of Veerappan’s gang, villagers and mediapersons. Some speak of the heinous crimes he committed, while others justify his actions, ensuring multiple perspectives to the events chronicled in the series.

Muthulakshmi once said that movies like ‘Attahasa’, ‘Vana Yuddham’ and ‘Killing Veerappan’, based on Veerappan’s life, did not do justice to her husband as they all were one-sided. Selvaraj gives her enough time and space to tell her side of the story.

Divided into four parts, the series establishes Veerappan as ‘The Forest King’ in the first chapter. He consolidates his criminal empire, igniting a long-standing rivalry with the police. The fight gets intense in Chapter 2, ‘The Blood Bath’. By the time it enters Chapter 3, he becomes ‘The Revolutionary’, championing the Tamilian cause. A major incident that intensified the political warfare against Veerappan was the kidnapping of Dr Rajkumar, an iconic actor who was considered Karnataka’s cultural ambassador. Veerappan’s desperation to live a quiet life in Sri Lanka, and ultimately his doom brought about by Operation Cocoon launched by a Special Task Force of the Tamil Nadu Police in 2004, form the crux of Chapter 4, ‘The Way Out’.

Veerappan’s story — his cruelty, his vulnerability, his vanity (he loved to be clicked and he dyed his hair and moustache religiously), his generosity (the Robinhood to a certain strata of society) and his fighting strategy — are gripping enough. But, with remastered pictures, long shots of the dense jungles spreading across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala and haunting background music composed by Jhanu Chanthar, Selvaraj has taken the series to another level. This narration has depth and a deep understanding of the enigmatic relationship that Veerappan shared with the jungle and how the socio-political situation of a society could create an entity like him.

‘The Hunt for Veerappan’ neither romanticises him, nor the STF’s 20-year struggle to capture him. Selvaraj touches controversial incidents like the torture that Muthulakshmi allegedly faced in police custody, alleged burning down of houses of innocents at Nallur and the alleged custodial torture of villagers by a special force headed by former DGP Shankar M Bidari without sensationalising any of those events.

By the time the docu-series ends, it’s not the bullet-ridden ambulance in which Veerappan took his last ride or the conspiracy theories regarding his end that stay in one’s mind, but the words of the bandit’s long-time associate, Anburaj: “Veerappan may have died but the reason for a Veerappan to exist in society in the first place — those social issues, were they ever discussed?”

Anyone listening?