October 1994
Nearly a year after the raid on his camp, Veerappan and his men were back in the area near Geddasal. As they observed the idyllic village from their vantage point high up on a hill, they noticed an old shepherd grazing his sheep, along with his grandson.
At the sight of the strangers, the shepherd tried to flee, but was quickly surrounded. ‘Some men in your village spoke to the police. I want their names,’ Veerappan told him.
‘I don’t know anything. I’m just a simple shepherd. Please let me go,’ the man pleaded.
‘Let’s see if some special treatment helps you remember,’ Veerappan said.
Sure enough, the shepherd cracked under torture and quickly revealed the names of Jadeyan and five others suspected to be Nawaz’s informers.
‘See! That wasn’t so difficult, was it?’ smiled Veerappan. Then, turning to his men, ‘Take a lunch break. We’ll go to the village after that.’
As the men began to settle down, the shepherd made a desperate attempt to escape and warn the villagers. But before he could get far, he was shot. Veerappan and his gang went about preparing their food calmly and ate lunch. Even as the shepherd’s stunned grandson huddled near the old man’s body, the gang taunted him and forced him to eat, the boy later told the police.
‘Keep your trap shut when we come to the village or I’ll send you as well to your grandfather,’ warned Veerappan.
As dusk settled upon the village, the gang entered Geddasal. ‘Police,’ called out Arjunan. ‘We want to meet these men,’ he said, listing the names provided by the shepherd.
In the poor light, the villagers only saw that the men were wearing fatigues and carrying weapons. Eagerly believing the lie, they came forward. But one man was missing.
‘Where’s Jadeyan?’ asked Arjunan.
‘Not here,’ came the answer.
By a stroke of incredibly good fortune, Jadeyan had gone to meet Mohan Nawaz that day.
Eyewitnesses say that Arjunan looked quizzically at his brother. Veerappan shrugged and nodded. Suddenly, the gang members swung into action. They seized the bewildered men, tied them with ropes and hustled them to the village square.
‘What are you doing? We are your men. We always help you against Eerappan,’ one of the hapless villagers pleaded.
‘Oh you do, do you?’ roared an infuriated Veerappan, alternating between filthy abuses in Kannada and Tamil. ‘Bervasi (Bastards), I am Veerappan. You’d sell your mothers for money. How much did the STF pay you, you traitors? I would have paid you more. I will kill anybody who helps the STF. Let this be a lesson.’
According to police reports and eyewitness accounts, at Veerappan’s signal, the gang shot the men, hacked their necks with machetes and set fire to their houses.
An STF party led by Karuppusamy that arrived on the scene hours later found the five men, one of whom was miraculously alive. Raman had not just survived the gunshot wound and a machete cut, but had been lying there bleeding for several hours before the STF party rushed him to the hospital.
Geddasal became a magnet for the media, who nudged the shocked survivors to relive the horrific experience over and over again. Twenty years on, Raman still lives, though the scars on his thigh, face and neck serve as a daily reminder of the massacre on 8 October.
As the traumatized villagers gathered around for the funeral of the fallen men, one of them spoke up, tears streaming down his face, ‘God has forsaken us. We should close the temple dedicated to the village deity Jadayasamy. We will only reopen it after justice has been served.’
When I met Nawaz during my trip to Asanur in July 2001, I went with him to visit Geddasal as well.
The shut doors of the temple seemed to be silently reproaching me. ‘One day,’ I promised myself, ‘one day, I will come and pray in this temple after it has been reopened.’
11
The STF’s First Casualty—Senthil
August 2001
We were at the STF memorial at Thattakarai. I looked at the names of all the STF martyrs carved into the slab of rock, an edifice to remember the sacrifices of our fellow officers and men. Its sheer simplicity only served to make it more poignant.
As I started to turn away, I touched the ground next to the memorial, trying not to make a big show of it. My driver noticed my show of reverence. He seemed touched by the gesture, but said nothing.
A couple of days later, I ran into Sanjay Arora in Coimbatore, where he had taken up office as commissioner. ‘We’ve lost some good men,’ I said, mentioning my visit to the memorial and the fact that it weighed on my mind.
‘Far too many,’ said Arora. ‘I still remember the first loss like it happened yesterday. What makes it even worse is that I was on that raid at Sorgam.’
‘That means paradise in Tamil, doesn’t it?’ I shook my head. ‘Talk about irony.’
‘The strange thing is that when I told the team about the location, one of the men pointed his finger towards the sky and quipped, “I’m going to Sorgam.” It turned out to be a deadly statement, as he was the first to fall that day,’ said Arora.
That man happened to be SI Senthil. A team man, he was always remembered for a unique habit. At the end of a day-long futile jungle search, he would charge up a tall rock and scream at the top of his voice, ‘Veerappan! Where are you? I’ve come for you.’
September 1994
The informer burst into the Karnataka STF’s camp in Dhimbam. Although located in Tamil Nadu, it was Shankar Bidari’s second headquarters. The news the visitor had brought immediately got the officer’s attention.
‘We had gone to hunt sambar deer in Sorgam Valley and came across gangsters who snatched our guns and our rice.’
‘What time?’ asked Bidari.
‘The sun was that high,’ the informer said, gesturing with his hand to indicate the approximate time of day.
Bidari immediately called Arora. ‘I’ll meet you over a meal,’ Arora replied to his message in code.
By 2 a.m. on 17 September, several Tamil Nadu STF members reached Dhimbam by van and climbed further up the hills on foot. The Karnataka team was already waiting at a forest depot. They were accompanied by BSF men, carrying LMGs and 2-inch mortars. A headcount revealed that 150 men were present.
After a quick but short joint briefing, mixed teams were formed. Conventional wisdom suggests that variety is the spice of life. But in life-and-death situations, especially during intense operations where stealth and time are of essence, it can add a layer of unwanted and even unwelcome complexity, since the man standing next to you may be a stranger to the functioning of your unit.
SI Senthil led the Tamil Nadu STF’s Delta team. The fifteen-member team included STF constable Ramesh, who had suffered an ankle injury a couple of weeks ago. Though only midway through the four weeks’ rest that he had been advised, Ramesh was the first to jump into the van when he heard about the op.
When the signal was flashed to take a ten-minute break, the teams halted gratefully and spread out on the ground. They had been trekking through the dense terrain for nearly three hours. As he munched on six chutney-soaked idlis, Ramesh turned to Senthil and asked, ‘Did you notice fresh incense sticks at the temple we just crossed?’
‘I was also wondering about it. What if they were left by the gang? Do you think we’ll get A-1 today?’ asked Senthil.
Later, a petty shopkeeper confirmed that he had indeed sold the incense sticks to the gangsters. And yes, he had seen many guns.
Short break done, Senthil gestured to the team. The cheery mood vanished immediately and the men resumed their silent march, taking great care not to crush any dry leaves beneath their boots.
Gradually, the terrain began to dictate the movement of the men. Senthil’s team came upon a shallow stream 15 feet wide, its slopes 10 feet high and steep like a wall, forcing them to split into two sections—one under Senthil, and the other under Ravi.
The track petered out. Ravi’s team reached a narrow ridge and fell in
to single file. He looked at Senthil, who gestured, ‘This is the area.’
Their gaze met one last time. They nodded at each other and parted.
The mist had cleared, but there was still a nip in the air. Senthil’s team skirted a shola grove whose huge trees let in only a bluish green haze—the kind of hue you see through night-vision goggles. Their bodies were alert and tense, eyes scanning the area for any indicator of recent movement—bushes disturbed, grass stepped on, cobwebs broken—that could signal that a man or beast had passed by. A smear, a piece of torn fabric—spotting any of this in time could mean the difference between life and death.
Senthil pantomimed, ‘Stop,’ his index finger pointing towards the ground. His senses were tingling, warning him that something was wrong, even though he could not see anything. Everyone stopped, except one person.
Ramesh pirouetted and began sprinting, ignoring the shooting pain in his ankle. In his peripheral vision, Ramesh had spotted a flash of black, green and red. STF men always avoided wearing red in the forest. Alarm bells rang inside his head.
Ravi saw Ramesh’s about-turn. Puzzled, Ravi began to walk towards him. The next few events occurred in a split second. From amidst a clump of shrubs, Ramesh suddenly saw something rising and froze in shock. The famous moustache and face came into view. As with the hood of a cobra, the rest of the anatomy seemed irrelevant. As adrenalin rushed through his system, Ramesh instinctively fell flat on his stomach. But he had made a fatal mistake. Even as Ravi realized that he had Veerappan in his sights and aimed, Ramesh got up again, blocking his line of fire.
Sorgam turned into hell as guns opened up. Bullets ripped into Ramesh, even as he reflexively pressed the trigger. There was no strength left in his index finger. Sticky fluid began covering his eyes. He fought the urge to shut them, suddenly terrified that he would never open them again.
As if in a dream, Ramesh found himself face down on the ground. Stones and rubble smacked his face, kicked up by more shots that came his way. Ramesh’s body jerked, his arms moved as if he was dancing. Darkening shapes whizzed past him in a blur.
A BSF havildar came running up and tried to align the LMG he was carrying. Bullets ripped into him and he went down. A wounded Ravi saw Senthil charging towards them. Then he passed out. When he woke up hours later, he saw a nurse.
Gradually, Ravi pieced together what had happened after he fell unconscious. His first response was a philosophical ‘It could have been me’, which was quickly followed by bone-crushing guilt that afflicts every combat-hardened soldier whose comrades have died in action—why him and not me?
Adrenaline pumping furiously, Senthil had raced towards the sound of the gunshots and seen the three men lying on the ground, but no one else. He moved a few paces in the 10 o’clock direction where the injured lay. Suddenly, acting purely on instinct, he veered 7 o’clock, zigzagging between a clutch of shrubs, and crossed a clearing. Then, he noticed a big boulder.
He squinted due to the sudden glare of the sun and turned his neck towards a smaller boulder to the right.
Senthil would never come to know it, but his instincts were spot-on. Veerappan’s men had split into two sections. One group crouched behind the big boulder and the other behind the smaller one. As Senthil tried to decide his next move, a bullet rang out.
The projectile tunnelled through his left eye and penetrated his brain. As the rest of the team arrived and gave covering fire, Senthil’s buddy crawled up to him and felt his neck for a pulse. Then he tried the chest, followed by the wrist. With rising desperation, he checked again. No sign of life!
In the adjoining hills, Arora frowned as his walkie came alive. ‘Delta calling Star,’ the voice at the other end quivered.
‘Star answering,’ Arora replied, assuming that he would get an update on the fierce exchange of fire that had echoed in the hills and had just stopped.
Then he paused, wondering if he had given away his position to the enemy. After all, it was Senthil who used the call sign ‘Delta’ for the team he headed. What did this mean?
Even as these thoughts went through his head, the words that followed hit him like a hammer blow.
‘Senthil Ayya is no more,’ the voice said.
Arora clenched his fists. It was the first casualty suffered by the Tamil Nadu STF. What made it worse was the fact that the man they had just lost was one of the most popular officers on the force.
‘BSF Havildar Bhupender Singh and Constable Ramesh too are dead,’ the voice went on.
Arora shuddered. The teams came back three men short that day. The deaths of the men weighed on their minds. No mission haunts you more than the one from which you return carrying the stiffening body of a buddy, even if you are a commando. As the grim news spread, Arora saw some of his boys consoling the others before breaking down themselves.
I remember I was in Madurai, where I was overseeing security drills for the CM’s medal parade, when I heard the news. The thought that elite forces choose and lose the best flashed through my mind, even as I rushed to Erode to share the STF’s grief. My wife accompanied me on that four-hour journey, throughout which I stayed silent. I remember being thankful for her quiet support. Sensing my need to come to terms with the event, she wisely refrained from trying to initiate any conversation, instead placed a consoling hand on mine a couple of times.
Senthil was one of the fifteen members (a total of seven SIs and eight others) from the CM’s protection detail that I had hand-picked for the STF. Yes, he may have volunteered to go, but somewhere deep down, I could not shrug off a crushing sense of guilt. As I drove towards Erode, I vowed to return to the STF and complete the job for which it had been set up. It was almost as if the fates had colluded that day to allow me to return to the STF seven years later.
When we reached Erode, I found three wooden coffins that lay wrapped in the tricolour in the corridor of the town hospital, where ministers were leading a long row of mourners. Twenty-one guns boomed during the next three days at three funerals in three remote villages. The last post was sounded and arms reversed. This was a sign that the gun had been shamed, since it was the means for committing a shameful act.
The CM extolled Senthil’s work and sanctioned ₹15 lakh—the highest solatium then in India. Senthil’s name went on to become an invocation and a battle cry for his comrades. For a few in the STF, his death triggered a wave of panic, paving the way for their departures, as they sought and were granted transfers. But for others like Nawaz, Karuppusamy, Ashok Kumar and F.M. Hussain, it became the reason for not leaving the STF till their job was done.
In the years that followed, we went on to lose many more good men—but not all of them to the enemy’s bullets. But that is a story for another day, as Veerappan’s next escapade led not just to a serious loss of face on his part, but also to the death of men crucial to his functioning.
12
The ₹1,000 crore Ransom Demand
August 2001
After the massacre at Geddasal, we posted guards in the village. We sent out lots of patrols into the jungle, followed by undercover ops. ‘But nothing worked,’ Karuppusamy recounted as I sat listening at the STF headquarters.
‘Speaking of undercover, you had spent a lot of time with Arjunan under an assumed identity, isn’t it?’ I said, adding, ‘What was he like?’
The extremely prim and proper Karuppusamy pursed his lips. ‘God, did he use foul language, especially when talking about Shankar Bidari and Mohan Nawaz. And the amount of food he could eat, even though he was lanky like his brother! He was under medical care at the time, but that certainly didn’t affect his appetite. It all started when Arjunan developed a cyst on his right thigh …’
December 1994
‘Anna, the pain is killing me. I can’t take it any more. Do something, please,’ wailed Arjunan, pointing at his thigh.
Veerappan grunted in frustration. After the attack on his camp, the remnants of his gang had shifted further west, close to the eastern Nilgiris
and the Bhavanisagar Dam. But they were constantly badgered by patrols and raids. In an effort to create some breathing space, Veerappan had tried to lure Sanjay Arora—who had moved the STF out of Mettur to Bannari in the west and was now focused on the dam area—into a trap.
Veerappan had sent him a recorded tape, in which he said, ‘You are a good man from North India. I would give you ₹25 crore. You could keep ‘5 crore for yourself, and donate the rest to the PM. I wish your wife and your little boy who stay in Mettur well.’ Veerappan further said that he was willing to surrender if Arora came alone and unarmed to meet him.
With the brutal deceitful murder of DCF Srinivas still fresh in the minds of the STF, the brigand’s message had set alarm bells ringing. But Arora was tempted by the prospect of using Veerappan’s bait to capture him. He had relayed a message that he was willing to meet the man.
On the appointed day, Veerappan’s emissary Selvaraj had arrived on a motorcycle to pick Arora up. But to his shock, he had found Arora getting into a specially modified bulletproof Jonga, accompanied by four other STF officers—Ashok Kumar, Mohan Nawaz, Balasubramaniyan and Karuppusamy.
Selvaraj immediately turned his bike around and drove away at top speed. He managed to warn Veerappan and the proposed meeting was abandoned. Veerappan, who saw the Jonga approaching at a distance from a knoll, was puzzled by its appearance. He mistook it for a mini-tank and wasted no time in taking to his heels the moment Selvaraj yelled out his warning.
Another agonized moan from his brother brought Veerappan back to the present. The escalating cries of pain made him realize that some drastic action was needed.
‘Nobody in the gang has the skill to treat him. He needs a proper hospital. But the moment we go there, the STF will arrest him. We need a hostage we can use as leverage,’ mused Veerappan.
One of his trusted aides spoke up: ‘Anna, you remember some villagers were telling us about this DSP Chidambaranathan, who has a farm nearby and visits it frequently?’
Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand Page 9