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The long reach of India's 'Bandit
King'
By Sudha
Ramachandran
 BANGALORE - Two
years after his sensational kidnapping of movie megastar
Rajkumar, India’s "Bandit King" Koose Muniswamy
Veerappan has struck again. His victim this time is a
former minister in the Karnataka government, H Nagappa,
who was kidnapped last week from his home in
Chamarajnagar district, about 250 kilometers south of
Bangalore.
Nagappa’s abduction has not been
accompanied by the kind of mass hysteria that was
witnessed during the 108 days that Veerappan held the
phenomenally popular Rajkumar hostage. Nonetheless,
there are strong parallels between these two kidnap
dramas and those that preceded them (there have been 33
in all so far), at least in terms of their broad
contours. The common thread of government ineptitude and
police bungling runs through every one of the kidnapping
episodes. There is, as the Indian Express has noted in
an editorial "a sickening sense of deja vu".
At
the center of the crisis is the wily Veerappan, easily
identified by his bushy, handlebar moustache. Among
India’s most deadly fugitives, he is wanted for over 100
murders and carries a price of around US$33,000 on his
head. Veerappan is said to have killed over 2,000
elephants – he was 14 when he killed his first one – and
is accused of smuggling ivory worth $2.6 million and
sandalwood worth $22 million.
The only time that
Veerappan has been behind bars was in 1986. He escaped,
however, killing four policemen and a forest official.
It is hard to believe that an aging bandit whose health
is failing has been able to elude the law for so long.
The size of his gang is said to have fallen drastically.
Yet every time the police feel that they are closing in
on him, he gives them the slip, vanishing in a cloud of
grenade smoke or simply "disappearing". "Hunting him is
like chasing a phantom," says one police officer who was
involved in operations to nab him some years ago.
In 1990, the governments of the two states of
Karnataka and Tamil Nadu (the forest in which the bandit
operates straddles these two states) formed a special
task force (STF) to nab Veerappan. The hunt is said to
have cost the Tamil Nadu government a pretty packet.
Karnataka has forked out a vast amount too. Yet
Veerappan has eluded them. He continues to strike right
under the nose of the STF and has always remained
several steps ahead of its personnel.
Veerappan
has a Robin Hood like image among the people in the
villages he frequents. Caste loyalties and fear of
invoking the brigand’s wrath have kept entire villages
in his area on his side, and information about his
whereabouts is hard to come by. Besides, several police
are in his pay. Nobody will dare betray him, the price
on his head notwithstanding.
"Veerappan
territory", as the 6,000 square kilometers of forest in
which he operates is called, is treacherous terrain -
thick impenetrable jungle, hills, ravines - but he knows
it well.
Although the STF has been combing the
forests for years and has frequently claimed to have him
contained in a small area, its operations have been far
from satisfactory. Political interference - Veerappan is
said to have the support of some politicians - and
frequent shifting of senior personnel have impeded the
STF's functioning.
R Krishna Kumar writes in The
Hindu that it is only after an abduction that the STF
moves into peak action and patrols the forests, even at
night. Otherwise, the STF personnel follow an
established route during the day and return to barracks
at night, which is when Veerappan emerges to strike. The
force is poorly motivated, ill equipped and
understaffed.
But more than the shortcomings of
the STF is the shrewdness of Veerappan’s strategy that
has helped him remain ahead of his opponents.
Veerappan has cleverly exploited the bitter
rivalry between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The two states
are locked in a long-running dispute over the sharing of
the waters of the River Cauvery, a dispute that has
assumed serious proportions in recent months. It has in
the past exploded into violent riots between Kannadigas
(those who speak Kannada, the language of the majority
in Karnataka) and Tamils (those whose mother tongue is
Tamil, the predominant language in Tamil Nadu and which
is spoken by a sizeable number in Karnataka).
Until 1997, Veerappan's demands were for money,
release of his associates and once even for amnesty.
There has been a change in strategy since. A Tamil,
Veerappan has sought to project himself as a defender of
Tamil interests, and his hostages have frequently been
from Karnataka.
During the Rajkumar hostage
drama, Veerappan demanded that Tamil be made compulsory
in schools in Tamil Nadu up to grade 10, for Tamil to be
given second language status in Karnataka, for the
erection of a statue of the ancient Tamil poet
Thiruvalluvar in Bangalore and for the release of
members of armed Tamil groups jailed under the Terrorist
and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA).
Although
none of these demands were conceded - the crisis was
finally resolved with Veerappan reportedly being paid a
huge sum of money - Veerappan, by inflaming the passions
of the Kannadigas, a strategy that sparked off
anti-Tamil violence in Bangalore and districts bordering
Tamil Nadu, paralyzed the Karnataka government for
months.
As in 2000, this time, too, Veerappan’s
hostage is from Karnataka. Securing the safe release of
the hostage is a priority therefore for the Karnataka
government. It is anxious to enter into negotiations
with the brigand (in 2000 it is said to have struck a
secret deal with him to secure Rajkumar’s release) and
seems open to easing STF operations against Veerappan to
enable talks. That is not the case with the Tamil Nadu
government. While promising all help to resolve the
crisis, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa has
ruled out negotiations.
The two states are
opposed on the issue of deploying para-military forces
as well to hunt Veerappan. Karnataka wants the Border
Security Force (BSF) to be redeployed. Tamil Nadu is
opposed to it, as it did not prove effective on the two
occasions it was deployed in the past. In fact, the
first time it was deployed to nab Veerappan, during
Jayalalithaa’s first tenure as chief minister, the BSF
operated only in Karnataka.
This absence of a
coordinated approach has helped Veerappan. When
Karnataka turns the heat on him, he flees into Tamil
Nadu and vice versa.
In recent years, Veerappan
has linked up with extremist groups known to have
connections with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE). These are the Tamil National Liberation Army
(TNLA) and the Tamil National Retrieval Force (TNRF).
Both espouse an explosive mix of Maoism and Tamil
nationalism. The TNLA calls for the "liberation" of
Tamil Nadu from the Indian union and has supported the
demands of the LTTE for a separate state in the north
and east of Sri Lanka.
Veerappan is yet to
reveal his demands this time. He has in a cassette
released after Nagappa’s abduction accused Karnataka and
Tamil Nadu of failing to fulfill the assurances they had
given him when he released Rajkumar. He has called for
the release of his "well-wishers" in jail. He may have
in mind his Tamil nationalist/extremist friends who are
currently in jail. These include P Nedumaran, leader of
the Tamil Nationalist Party and known LTTE supporter who
has been jailed under the Prevention of Terrorism Act
(POTA); Maran, another known LTTE sympathizer and
Kolathur Mani, a granite businessmen who is said to
provide the LTTE with logistic and material support.
Several powerful interests have come together to
keep Veerappan afloat. Tamil Nadu politicians,
especially those belonging to political parties that
hold sway over the Vanniyar community, to which
Veerappan belongs, are backing him to use his influence
to make political gains. There is the granite lobby that
is into illegal quarrying and needs Veerappan’s goodwill
to operate in the areas he controls. And there are the
extremists who work in tandem with him. Their access to
explosives and the illegal activity in which they are
engaged brings the smuggling-poaching-gunrunning-granite
quarrying elements together.
It is widely
believed that Veerappan now wants to move away from
banditry to politics a-la Phoolan Devi, the Bandit
Queen. However, unlike Phoolan, who was forced by
circumstances and an unjust social order to take up arms
to fight the system, Veerappan is no victim. He lacks
the aura of a wronged man fighting for justice,
notwithstanding his attempts at appearing as a crusader
for social justice in recent years. He is simply a
murderer cum smuggler with a very brutal record.
The influence of the TNLA and TNRT over
Veerappan is said to have increased significantly in
recent years. That could make the coming weeks more
difficult for Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Jayalalithaa is
deeply opposed to the LTTE and the extremist sections in
Tamil Nadu. The TNLA and TNRT are less likely to give in
to pressure than an ailing, aging Veerappan. And if any
harm comes to Nagappa, the backlash against Tamils in
Karnataka could be serious.
(©2002 Asia Times
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