My gaze went up to the hills. Was he still holed in there?
I frowned; the sultry heat was not helping my mood. Sooner or later, I would have to return to my job in Chennai, even as Veerappan remained as elusive as ever.
My thoughts were interrupted by our scout, Constable Seemaichamy. ‘We should be moving out,’ he said.
We faced a trek of almost three hours to get to our rendezvous point. Since we were in the jungle, there was no question of cooking a meal. We simply wolfed down some nuts, dry fruits and a powder made of pounded millets that was a local favourite.
Seemaichamy took point. The rest of us split into three squads of fifteen each. Each squad maintained a certain distance from the other two—far enough to ensure that we wouldn’t get trapped collectively in case of an ambush, but close enough that the other two squads could rush to aid any team that ran into trouble.
As we trekked through the forest, I studied the surroundings. We were in a densely forested area. There was a shallow rivulet to our left and to the right was a steep slope that worried me. If anybody was standing on top of it, he would have the advantage of higher ground in the event of an attack on us.
Even as the thought crossed my mind, I noticed the man next to me stiffen. I began to ask what the matter was, when I heard the sound of barking.
‘Just dogs,’ I said softly.
‘Not this deep in the jungle, unless there are some humans,’ he reasoned.
As the implication of his reply began to dawn on me, we heard a muted explosion. Phut!
All of us froze. I scanned the area for Seemaichamy, but couldn’t see him. Trees were obstructing the line of sight.
Rat-a-tat! A rifle opened fire.
I ducked instinctively and the boys too hugged the ground, losing precious seconds of the chase in the process. Even as my brain began to process what was happening, we heard the sound of somebody splashing through water. Seemaichamy was yelling at the top of his voice; he was in hot pursuit of whatever was out there.
‘Come on,’ I shouted and we raced after him. We came upon a clearing and, with some relief, spotted Seemaichamy standing on the edge of the rivulet, firing at the area across, screaming abuses.
‘Easy. Friends behind you,’ I shouted. When someone is spraying bullets in a life-or-death situation, you don’t want to startle him by sneaking up behind him and end up a casualty of friendly fire.
He stopped shooting and swung around, still wide-eyed from the adrenalin rush. We went up to him and peered across the rivulet. Leaves and branches were still moving. Clearly, someone had run through them, but we couldn’t see who.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
Seemaichamy wiped his forehead. ‘I heard this “phut” sound. Then I saw somebody get up from behind a tree and dash across. I tried to shoot him, but the rascal zigzagged and I missed.’
I turned to a sub-inspector. ‘Take a search party after him, but don’t go in too far. Make sure you don’t walk into a trap.’
Then, I turned to the clearing. ‘What the hell just happened?’ I wondered.
One of the men gently tapped my arm. ‘Look, sir,’ he said, pointing to a twisted piece of wire lying on the ground. The earth around it was charred. I approached it warily. A distinctive burnt smell filled the air.
‘Cordtex,’ I exhaled. ‘Check the ground for more wire, but be very careful. No sudden movements.’
Cordtex is a type of detonating cord generally used in mining. Once triggered, it charges at 8,000 metres per second—well over ten times the speed of an AK bullet.
What a narrow escape it was that day. It is these close brushes with death that make you value what you have—family, friends and comrades in arms who stand by you in sticky situations.
Upon further examination of the area, my team and I found a long wire running all the way to the tree behind which Veerappan’s man had been concealed. The clearing we had walked into was a minefield and we were bang in the middle of it. We found beedi butts, empty peanut packets and a battery near the end of the wire. It was pretty obvious that someone had kept a vigil there.
It took hours to demine the area, and finally the gravity of the situation began to sink in. I found that almost 450 kg of dynamite jelly and ammonium nitrate had been placed in pits in the entire clearing. The pits, which were dug up in a sort of diamond formation, were carefully covered up.
I couldn’t help but admire the clever tactic, even as I realized the huge risk we had stumbled into unknowingly. If anyone had been blown up in front of us, our training would have kicked in, making us zigzag instinctively to the right or the left, straight into a mine. I would like to think that it was an eerie coincidence, but there were forty-five pits—the same number as the strength of the ambush party I was leading that day.
To our good fortune, these mines were not the ‘smart mines’ of today that can redeploy themselves and are often called ‘brains without a heart’. What we had run into were basic ones linked by cordtex wire to a device that was activated when a plunger was pushed down. For some reason, the wire malfunctioned that day.
Cordtex has an interesting property. If the wire gets twisted into a knot, it turns into a mini-explosive and goes off. But if the ends turn at 90 degrees, it behaves differently. That’s exactly what had happened that day. The muffled explosion that had followed was too mild to cause any damage, but it had tipped us off that something was amiss.
Veerappan’s man, who was watching us from hiding, had then tried to set off the mines, but couldn’t as the wire didn’t work. When the boys realized just how close they’d come to death, they hugged each other in relief and excitement and shook hands with me. The maxim ‘there’s no atheist in jungle combat’ suddenly made perfect sense to me.
It wasn’t the first narrow escape of my career. But it reinforced my belief in the fact that capturing Veerappan would be a daunting challenge. It made me even more determined to stay on with the STF and help complete the job. Unfortunately, fate had other plans.
When I returned to the camp, I was told of a lightning call which I took while watching the Cauvery River from the balcony of Mettur STF camp. ‘The CM is fasting on Marina Beach over the Cauvery River water issue. You better rush back,’ Karuppannan, her secretary, told me over the phone. The waters of the Cauvery had divided the two states territorially and emotionally, even as the STFs across the river still stood united.
As I drove from Mettur, I couldn’t help but recall my narrow escape. Later, though, we learnt of Veerappan’s close encounter just a week before my team’s operation.
A couple of STF intel boys, both greenhorns, intercepted a suspect near Chinna Thanda. He was quizzed and allowed to go. Had they smelt his hands or searched in a 100 metre radius, things would have taken a different turn. The smell of soap and a barber’s kit would have led to a raid, and Veerappan and his top aides, who had their week-long stubble removed by those very hands, would have had very little response time. He turned out to be the designated barber of the gang.
It would be almost a decade before I would return to the jungle that Veerappan had turned into his killing fields.
10
The Biggest Raid on Veerappan’s Camp
August 2001
Within a few weeks of rejoining the STF after that fateful call from CM Jayalalithaa, I headed for Asanur Police Station, located at the southern tip of the Carnatic Plateau. The terrain around Dhimbam Hills was scenic, but now had a grim and bloody history, as it was during his stay around this region that Veerappan’s killings had peaked.
My plan was to recce every site in the area where Veerappan had staged an ambush or a massacre. In the run-up to the visit, I wanted to read up on most of the investigation and reports surrounding the incidents, but was failing miserably.
I was forced to plod through what seemed like fascinating footnotes. What should have made for racy reading was incredibly hard to decipher, due to the unintelligible scrawl. Exasperated, I glanced wryly for the
umpteenth time at the writer, Inspector Mohan Nawaz, who stood next to me with a sheepish look.
Quite clearly, Nawaz was much happier conducting raids than writing about them. Another thing most men of action have in common. When they finally get around to writing, the reports are barely legible or even comprehensible.
Mohan Nawaz was both a key member of the STF and also the local inspector. He had jurisdiction over nearly thirty villages. A fair-complexioned burly bachelor who—like Shakeel Ahmed—had vowed not to marry till Veerappan was brought to justice, Nawaz was well liked by villagers, especially since he often dipped into his meagre income for their welfare. As a result, in a stint of nearly ten years around Asanur, he had developed a reliable network of confidential informants (CIs).
Given the hostile terrain, road connectivity was a major issue in areas within Nawaz’s jurisdiction. Nawaz, a great believer in the Do-It-Yourself school of thought, had managed to mobilize villagers and organize the construction of a rough road in the area, which had added to his popularity.
This move by Nawaz flew in Veerappan’s face, as he constantly tried to project the STF and police as oppressors of the local populace. Not just Nawaz but several other officers like him were living contradictions of Veerappan’s propaganda.
Even as Nawaz and I caught up on the logistics of the day-to-day running of the police station and discussed finding a long-term but permanent solution to the Veerappan problem, one of his men gestured towards the gate.
Excusing himself, Nawaz went and spoke briefly with a shabbily dressed man.
‘Sir, Jadeyan found out you are here. He wants to pay his respects,’ Nawaz walked back to me and said.
‘Jadeyan?’ My eyebrows shot up. ‘The one who had provided the tip-off that helped us inflict major damage to Veerappan’s gang in 1993?’
Nawaz beamed his approval at my field knowledge. ‘Yes, sir, the same. His appearance is deceptive,’ he said.
September 1993
A stone’s throw from Asanur Police Station, the STF sentry frowned as stray dogs around the camp began barking. A man who looked like he hadn’t bathed for several days came into view, taking great care to show that his hands were empty.
‘What do you want?’ growled the sentry.
‘I’ve come to see Mohan Nawaz Sir,’ replied the man.
‘Sir is not here right now,’ the sentry told the stranger.
The man shrugged and replied, ‘I’ll wait. What I have to say is for his ears only.’
‘Get lost! Don’t hang around here,’ said the sentry.
The stranger walked away. But unknown to the sentry, he stayed close to the camp and watched it from a concealed spot.
The next day, as Nawaz entered the camp, the man leapt out to meet him. ‘You again? Didn’t I tell you to go away?’ asked the furious sentry, ready to shoot the man that he now saw as a potential threat.
‘Wait, I know him,’ intervened Nawaz.
Despite his deceptive appearance, Jadeyan was the headman of Geddasal, a village largely inhabited by members of the Sholiga tribe that had blood ties to nearly thirty other villages nearby. Nothing happened in the area without Jadeyan’s knowledge. ‘You have something to say?’ asked Nawaz.
The man nodded, an excited torrent of words tumbling out of his mouth. ‘Ayya … in this forest … our village boys … they saw … lots and lots …’
‘What?’ asked an exasperated Nawaz.
‘Human excreta,’ Jadeyan said.
Nawaz made a face. The sentry, out of earshot but alert, read his boss’s face and thought his services may be sought any moment to frogmarch the visitor out of the camp.
‘Not our people. Strangers. Rice eaters. The stool is yellowish, not brown. I sent more people. They saw thatched sheds and a lot of people, including children. Must be the ones you are looking for,’ said Jadeyan.
Nawaz scratched his head thoughtfully. The local populace ate ragi and grains, a diet that tended to make the stool dark. The people Jadeyan was talking about were definitely outsiders. But who could they be? Rosewood smugglers from Kerala? But they rarely travelled in large numbers, or with children. Could it be Veerappan’s gang?
But the gangsters erased even traces of cooking or walking, pretty much like cats cover their scat. Jadeyan noticed Nawaz’s puzzled expression and remarked, ‘The presence of too many kids may have prevented them from covering their tracks.’
‘We’ll check it out,’ Nawaz said, before hurrying off to his single-room office-cum-residence and informing his boss Sanjay Arora, whose last raid on Veerappan’s stronghold had been unsuccessful because the gang had fled.
Sanjay wished to be doubly sure and brought Walter and Shankar Bidari into the loop. Karnataka STF and some BSF troops (on loan to Karnataka from the Centre) were also roped in for the ops.
By the next morning, the sizeable contingent of assembled men shouted ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ with great gusto and set off, halting only for a few minutes to eat some idlis.
Someone once said, ‘A guerrilla is like a poet, keen to the rustle of leaves, the break of the twigs, the ripples of the river.’ Each STF boy was now a poet. His movements turned more subtle. His eyes and ears were wide open.
The three columns, that resembled three long snakes slithering up the hills, split. By first light, they were to converge on the possible location of the camp from different access points. However, Arora’s team reached the camp ahead of the other two.
The scout of Arora’s team managed to locate the camp, deep in the forest. Its approach was blocked by chest-high Genangu grass. Quietly, the scout parted the grass and peered, and was stunned by the sight.
There were about a dozen or so huts with thatched roofs. Women were going about their chores, children played in the clearing and men were engaged in cutting logs and cleaning rifles.
He quickly crawled back and signalled Arora that he had spotted the camp. Arora raised his binoculars. Even from 300 metres, he could see the encampment. From the sounds emanating from the camp, it was clear that some women were pounding grains, while others were grinding masala. It was also evident that the men weren’t expecting any trouble. Arora saw one man sitting on a flat rock cleaning his gun, with another sitting near him helping.
‘The foot soldiers are here. But where are the generals?’ wondered Sanjay, scanning the camp for familiar faces.
Just then, as luck would have it, a small barking deer jumped out of the underbrush near one of the BSF men. The startled man promptly dropped the aluminium utensil that contained food for the entire party, and yelled out, thinking he was being attacked by a ferocious animal. The other men in his team, whose nerves were already on edge, reacted by opening fire, even though they were still not in the perfect position.
Pandemonium erupted. The element of surprise was lost yet again. Everyone in the camp ran helter-skelter. Veerappan’s brother, Arjunan, who was in the camp, grabbed his sister-in-law Muthulakshmi by the hand and fled into the forest. Veerappan was away at a place near Gopinatham, gone apparently to withdraw some money from one of his well-hidden stashes (his jungle ATMs, we would joke).
In the heat of the moment, Arjunan and Muthulakshmi got separated and she was left to fend for herself, on the run from the police.
Early the next morning, she met five elderly men and begged them for help. The men told her to hide on a hillock and promised to return later in the day. By that time, the STF had already spread the word that they should be alerted if any strangers were noticed in the area.
When the elderly men returned, they were accompanied by the police.
Muthulakshmi was arrested and taken to the Karnataka STF camp, where she revealed what had happened during the raid. She later went on to allege that she had been tortured there.
On the whole, it was a successful raid that led to major losses for Veerappan. Reports from my counterparts in Karnataka revealed that as the gang scattered, Veerappan was forced to deal with multiple losses—of not just his wife
Muthulakshmi, but also of two of his trusted aides, Mariappan and N.S. Mani. Within days of the raid, both men were dead, killed in encounters with the Karnataka STF team that had apparently crossed into Tamil Nadu.
It was a huge blow to Veerappan. But it had another unforeseen effect. The bonhomie between the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu STFs was affected, especially as ego, as well as the matter of jurisdiction, came into play. Just before the raid, a Karnataka STF van was seen near the Tamil Nadu STF camp. Nobody disembarked, but it went further and circumambulated the Bannari Temple next to the camp. The Tamil Nadu STF later figured out that Shankar Bidari’s men, after a quick invocation of Devi Bannari, had left for the successful assault below the Dhimbam slopes. Within hours, the men had appeared at Bhavanisagar Police Station to report N.S. Mani’s death.
However, before hawks on both sides of the border could escalate the tension, Walter and Arora stepped in.
The prize money announced for Bidari was not collected by him until Veerappan’s death in Operation Cocoon. He was also eligible for a medal, but declined it, insisting that he would accept it only after Veerappan was brought to justice. Later, when he collected the prize money, he used a huge chunk to gift a gold trishul to the Bannari Temple.
After the raid, Veerappan was never able to gather such a large number of people under his leadership. From commanding over 100 people, he was now reduced to leading just ten to fifteen men at a time. Muthulakshmi’s imprisonment was also a huge source of anxiety for him, not just fear for her safety, but also because of the information that she could unwittingly reveal during interrogation.
Gang members who surrendered later revealed that even as Veerappan desperately dodged the police, another thought raged through his mind. ‘I must find the informer and settle scores. People must be reminded that they cannot mess with me without paying a heavy price.’
Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand Page 8