PROFESSIONAL KILLERS (True Crime)

by Gordon Kerr

  She walked into Bindh where 300 police waited to arrest her and the remnants of her gang. After surrendering herself onstage, she was charged with 48 crimes and went to prison for 11 years, slightly more than her negotiated demands had stipulated. In prison, she suffered from cancer and had an involuntary hysterectomy.

  She was finally released in 1994, launching Eklavya Sena, an organisation that aimed to teach lower-caste Indians the art of self-defence. She met and married Umaid Singh, a New Delhi business contractor.

  Her fame was huge. They made a film about her life, Bandit Queen, but she hated it and tried to get it banned. She sued the film’s producers and won $60,000 from them. Although illiterate, she put together an autobiography and travelled abroad, publicising it.

  In 1996 she caused astonishment and outrage in equal measure when she announced that she would be standing in the forthcoming election. She was heavily criticised by a group formed of the widows of the Behmai massacre who had formed an organisation to campaign against her. Nonetheless, she was duly elected as a member of the Indian parliament. Her political career was not a successful one, however, and scandal and trouble seemed to follow wherever she went. When she had a train halted at an unscheduled stop so that she could meet some friends there was outrage, and when she tried to visit the inmates of her former prison to be told that it was not visiting time, she abused the staff terribly.

  On 25 July 2001, as she was climbing out of her car at the gate of her house in New Delhi, Phoolan Devi was shot dead by two men who escaped in an auto rickshaw. Her killer, Sher Singh Rana, surrendered later, confessing to her murder and informing police that he was avenging the 22 deaths at Behmai.

  The Bandit Queen could not, in the end, escape from her terrible past. She was 37 years old.

  Veerappan

  India

  A group of women stood wailing at the burial place as people bent to pick up handfuls of mud as souvenirs, wrapping them lovingly in bits of cloth. Women, rearranging the flowers on the mound of mud, sobbed and placed pieces of coconut and burning incense sticks on it. They whispered about the man they had just buried, Koose Muniswamy Veerappan, known all over India simply as Veerappan. He was a Tamil bandit commonly thought of by the poor people who worshipped him and followed his every exploit as a sort of Robin Hood figure whose battles were all with the police and officialdom and never the poor. They talked of how the police had never intended to take him alive after his last encounter with them, insinuating that they had always meant to kill him.

  His charge sheet, if the police had taken him alive that October night instead of shooting him, would, indeed, have been prodigious. He was wanted for murdering roughly 124 people, including many senior police officers and forest officials, killing about 2,000 elephants, and smuggling ivory worth almost £2 million and an entire forest of sandalwood worth close to £11 million. They had put a price of 50 million rupees (£600,000) on his head, but still he managed to evade arrest for 30 years until he was finally gunned down in 2004.

  Veerappan was born into a family of poor cattle grazers in 1952, in the village of Gopinatham in Tamil Nadu, a state at the southern tip of India. Desperate to escape the mundane existence in his village and follow the example of Malayur Mammattiyan, a notorious bandit of the 1950s and 1960s who had been born and brought up in a village close to his, at the age of 18 he joined a gang of elephant poachers. Over the next few years he eliminated all rival gangs and achieved control of the entire forest belt, gaining a monopoly on the smuggling of sandalwood and ivory.

  He also led his gang of around 40 men in other activities such as killing and kidnapping, most of his victims being forestry officials, police officers and informers. His kidnappings and killings sometimes featured prominent people, senior officials or high-ranking policemen, the first being a senior forest official whom he kidnapped in 1987 and hacked to death shortly after. That same year he killed five members of a rival gang.

  Veerappan married four times, the first to a shepherdess, Muthulakshmi, in 1991. He had three daughters with her. However, he displayed the same calm ruthlessness towards his family as he did towards everyone else. Once, when he and his gang were hiding from some police officers who were nearby, he was afraid the crying of one of his daughters would alert them to his whereabouts. Chillingly, he strangled her.

  In spite of such horror, Veerappan was a surprisingly cultured man, with a deep love and knowledge of Carnatic music, a form of Indian classical music. He was religious and attended the Bannari Amman temple regularly, listened avidly to the BBC and adored the film The Godfather, which he watched more than 100 times, probably while tending to his fantastically extravagant handlebar moustache. He watched, fascinated, as the reformed bandit Phoolan Devi became a member of the Indian parliament, expressing a desire to one day do the same.

  Amongst the peasants of the Biligirirangana Betta and Male Mahadeshwara Betta Hills and the Sathyamangalam and Gundiyal forests, some 6,000 square kilometres of territory in the states of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, he was a hero. They saw him as someone who fought the many injustices that they faced at the hands of the hated police and the authorities. They provided the gang with food and clothing and protected them when necessary, although this may simply have been done out of fear or because he actually paid them to help him. It goes without saying that there were dire consequences for anyone who refused to help or gave the police information about his activities.

  In 1986 it looked like Veerappan’s days were numbered when he was finally arrested, the only time he was ever taken into custody. However, a payment of just over £1,000 to a corrupt police officer soon won him his freedom. Just a year later he rose to prominence with the killing of a forest officer called Chidambaram who was trying to bring a halt to the smuggling of sandalwood. In 1989 he kidnapped three forest personnel in the Begur forest. Their mutilated bodies were discovered 19 days later.

  By 1990 the state and national government were frustrated. They had thrown everything they could at him – extra resources and weaponry – and had still failed to capture Veerappan and his gang. Even more irritating was the near-mythical status that he had achieved in the region and this increased as the media began to show a greater interest in his activities and, particularly, in Veerappan the man. There were profiles of him, photographs and even interviews.

  On 10 November 1991 he killed the Karnataka Deputy Conservator of Forests, Pandillapalli Srinivas, whom he blamed for the suicide of his sister Mari. Srinivas was a popular man who had instituted a number of welfare measures in the region. He was trying to bring Veerappan to heel by persuading local villagers to boycott him and refrain from giving him any help. Therefore, when Veerappan sent word through his brother Arjunan that he would meet Srinivas at a farmhouse in Gopinatham to discuss surrendering, Srinivas believed him. Veerappan, of course, had no intention of surrendering and when the official arrived at the rendezvous, the bandit shot him and then beheaded him. In a gruesome warning to others who might try to interfere in his activities, Veerappan left the official’s severed head on a rock where it was discovered several days later.

  This atrocity was the last straw for the authorities. It was decided to constitute a Special Task Force (STF) of some 2,000 troops specifically to comb the forests and hills for Veerappan’s gang. The omens initially looked good when they actually succeeded in capturing some gang members.

  Then, in February 1992, still more progress was achieved when they caught up with and killed Veerappan’s second-in-command, Gurunathan. A huge man, over six feet tall and with a luxuriant moustache, Gurunathan was arrested by Shakeel Ahmed, Sub-Inspector of Police, and later killed by Police Superintendent Harikrishna in the Mysore district.

  Veerappan plotted his revenge. Firstly, he staged an attack on the Ramapura police station in the Chamarajanagar district, killing five officers and capturing a quantity of arms and ammunition. The STF killed four members of his gang in retaliation. Then in August 1992 he laid a trap for
the two men responsible for Gurunathan’s death and, attacking them with hand grenades and bombs, killed them and four other policemen. Further bad news came the following year, however, when his wife Muthulaksmi was arrested by the task force.

  His killing now escalated. He used a landmine to blow up a bus, killing 22 passengers including police and civilians. That year he also killed another six policemen. However, the Border Security Force and the Special Task Force, working together, succeeded in capturing 19 gang members and killing six in an action in which three police officers also lost their lives.

  Veerappan, at this point, requested an amnesty, but the authorities bent to the wishes of the relatives of the victims and the request was ignored. So the abductions and ransom demands continued. On 12 July 1993 he kidnapped nine forestry officials and issued demands for their release which again included an amnesty for himself and his men. His request was rejected, but he still released the men at the end of August.

  In December 1994 he kidnapped a deputy superintendent of police in the Coimbatore district of Chidambaranathan. Amongst his ransom demands was yet another amnesty request, but the main aim of this action was to try to get urgent medical aid for his brother Arjunan, who had been wounded in a previous action. The authorities complied with the request for medical help and Arjunan emerged from the forest to receive treatment. However, he and two other gang members accompanying him, were killed as they were being transported to Mysore. The police version said that they had committed suicide by taking cyanide. Veerappan, needless to say, thought otherwise.

  In 1996 he took plentiful revenge, killing another 11 policemen.

  After a gap of a year, Veerappan demonstrated that his killing was not just limited to policemen and forest officials when the bullet-riddled body of his heir apparent – known as ‘Baby’ Veerappan – was discovered in the forest. Just for good measure, though, he kidnapped another nine forest officials that year, as well as a couple of wildlife photographers.

  One of his most notorious kidnappings, and the one that was to bring him national as well as international notoriety, involved the abduction of the hugely popular film star, Dr Rajkumar. The 72-year-old Dr Raj, also known as ‘Natasarvabhouma’ or ‘Annavru’ (Big Brother) by his millions of fans, was the John Wayne of south Indian cinema. On 30 July 2000 Veerappan abducted him, his son-in-law Govindaraju and two others, from his ancestral home at Gajanur in Tamil Nadu. For the actor’s safe return Veerappan demanded the release of a number of his men who had been arrested under what he described as a defunct terrorism law.

  The Karnataka state government was thrown into deep crisis and arguments raged as to whether the army should be sent in to release the men. But they decided against it, and, after 108 days’ captivity, Dr Raj was finally released, unharmed, by Veerappan. It is unclear what the conditions of his release were, but one story has it that a ransom of 500,000 rupees or just over £6,000 was handed over.

  Then, in August 2002, he carried out another audacious kidnapping. It was the turn of the former state minister, H. Nagappa. Three months later, the ransom had not been paid and Nagappa was found dead in the forest. The authorities were now becoming alarmed by the fact that Veerappan was now working closely with Tamil extremist groups, demanding the release of their men who had been captured, and the reward for the capture of the bandit was increased to a massive 50 million rupees, about £600,000.

  They finally caught up with him in October 2004, although the circumstances of his death are even now shrouded in mystery and intrigue. Veerappan and two gang members were apprehended near the village of Paparapatti in Tamil Nadu by the Special Task Force, headed by Director-General of Police K. Vijay Kumar, Suprintendent Sentamarai Kannan and Suprintendent F. M. Hussain.

  The official statement said that men of the Special Task Force ambushed an ambulance in which Veerappan and his men were travelling. When they ordered the bandits to surrender, someone from inside the vehicle opened fire and the police officers responded in kind, killing all the occupants, including Veerappan. Press reports, featuring photographs of the bandit leader with a bullet hole above his left eye, seemed to contradict the police version, suggesting a straightforward execution. Veerappan’s widow claimed that they had actually been arrested several days previously, interrogated and then executed. She claimed that Veerappan had threatened that if he were arrested, he would blow the whistle on every policeman and official he had bribed during his 30-year criminal career.

  He was buried in the village of Moolakadu in Tamil Nadu, permission having been refused for a burial in his home village as the authorities feared what might happen with the large crowds that had gathered there. The police had wanted him to be cremated, but his family insisted on a burial and on an October day in 2004, tens of thousands fought their way through lines of police security to be at the graveside of their hero.

  Veerappan may be dead but his legend lives on.

  Aleksandr Solonik

  Russia

  Contract killing has become a way of death for contemporary Russians. A crime expert at the Russian Interior Ministry’s Scientific Research Institute has suggested that there may be anything between 500 and 700 contract killings a year. So, in recent years, as the country has stumbled from communism towards a market economy, the hitman has become commonplace. You can order a death like you can order a pizza, they say, and the going rate is anywhere between a $100 and hundreds of thousands of dollars. It depends who the victim is. Sometimes it is cheaper, not to say easier, to pay to have someone killed than to settle a dispute in court. If you live in a communal apartment, for example, with an elderly relative who seems to be living forever, it is easy and inexpensive – around $300 – to hire a drug addict to kill him or her. In one case, in the town of Zhukovsky, two Ukranians were arrested and charged with the stabbing to death of a 23-year-old man. The victim’s mother had paid them $300 to kill him. Another police official claims that for the price of a bottle of vodka, it is possible to get a homeless man to kill someone for you. Life is, indeed, cheap.

  Consequently, it comes as no surprise that an entire contract killing industry has grown up and the last 15 years have seen a wave of killings of prominent people. In 1995 TV anchorman Vladislav Listyev was gunned down in Moscow; in 1998 it was the turn of Liberal member of parliament Galina Starovoitova; in 2002 Valentin Tsvetkov, governor of the Magadan region, was killed in Moscow; 2004 brought the shooting of Paul Klebnikov, US editor of Forbes Russian edition, killed outside his office; in 2005 Aleksandr Slesarev, a former bank head, died; in 2006 Andrei Koslov, first deputy chairman of Russia’s Central Bank, and campaigning journalist Anna Polikovskaya, were both shot dead. For most of these crimes, no one has been brought to justice.

  One hitman stands head and shoulders above the rest, the ‘Superkiller’ as he is known, Aleksandr Solonik, who was born in the Russian city of Kurgan in 1960. As a boy, Solonik showed great interest in martial arts and guns and it seemed inevitable that, when he left school, he would go into the army. He joined the militia, a special internal security commando unit, and started training at the Gorkovskaya Institute. Stories suggest that the unit to which he was attached may have been trained in the assassination of senior officials of NATO countries. This is disputed by his lawyer who says that he served in Germany, but not as a special intelligence officer. Whatever the truth of his military service, it did not work out and after six months he was expelled from the institute, returning home to work as a gravedigger. He married a local girl and had a daughter but, like his military training, the marriage was short-lived and ended in divorce. Another marriage resulted in a son, but Solonik was a difficult man to live with.

  He tried to become a policeman, but again it did not work out for him and he had to leave the service. Then, in autumn 1987, he faced his first criminal charge when he was arrested for rape. Although the victim failed to prove his guilt and had, in fact, only gone to the police some months after the incident, he was treated harshly and sentenced
to eight months in a correctional facility in the Gulag. But Solonik was not the type of man to stay locked up for very long. The day that he was due to leave for prison, he was allowed some time to say goodbye to his wife, but Solonik used the opportunity to smash a window and leap from the second-floor room in which he was meeting her and escape. After several months of freedom, he reached the city of Tyumen and was in the process of having all of his distinguishing marks removed – a mole on his face and a crown-shaped tattoo on his hand – when he was arrested in the room in which they were carrying out the work. This time they did not take their eyes off him.

  Normally, when a prisoner had been a soldier, he was sent to a special facility or kept in isolation from other prisoners due to a fear of repercussions. However, in Solonik’s case this did not happen and when it became common knowledge that not only had he been a soldier, but had also been a member of the militia, he was in serious danger. The other prisoners attacked him, but Solonik was a tough individual and is said to have outfought groups of men, sometimes as many as 12 at a time. After a while, he gained the respect of his fellow inmates and they left him alone.

  In prison, he was a loner. He did not smoke, did not do drugs and was not interested in tattoos. He spent his time working out and stayed away from difficult prisoners. It paid off because he was soon sent to the industrial part of the prison where prisoners had more freedom of movement. He was merely biding his time, however. In April 1990, having served two of his eight years, he escaped again, squeezing through a small air vent. He headed back to Kurgan where he joined the local Kurgan crime organisation as a hitman and disappeared from view for four and a half years.