When A Demon Surrendered

Priyanka Rout

When A Demon Surrendered

While history recalls tales of heroes and their heroism, it does not forget about the coward behaviour shown by bandits and dacoits. While encounters and shoot at sight orders can be easily administered, nabbing these criminals alive is an altogether different experience for the policemen.

Veerappan. Illustrated by Anupama: Visual Storyteller at ThisDay

Criminals and crime. Though they always bag the title of ‘Power Couple’, their combination is often dangerous and lethal. While rural areas are littered with petty crimes such as robbery, chain snatching, and sometimes eve-teasing, the real crime goes in the urban areas. Forget travelogues and travel blogs. To have a real picture of what goes in the sparkling streets of cities, which roads have bodies buried underneath, have a look at the non-fiction crime books. The real stories of spine-chilling crimes of people like mobsters, serial killers, robbers, and terror suspects offer a surprisingly different view of urban life.

Open a book or watch a movie and you’ll find that cities transform their colours faster than a chameleon. In romance novels, they’re glittering gold. You might even bump into an attractive stranger who might turn out to be the leader of the Italian mafia and you suddenly fall in love with him. In business guides, cities are no less than hot seats of success. Memoirs sketch new and improvised versions of our old neighbourhoods. Yet again travel guides walk freely across cities and bump into the murder but after a few pages, they might just forget it.

While reading books and watching movies might seem very realistic, the reality is far away from what it may seem like in them. In tales of true crime, streets are dark with dangerous creatures lurking around the corner waiting for an opportunity to attack you when your let down your guard. Skylines are no more surrounded by stars, instead, they are cloaked with fogs of danger and mysteries. You can never trust a smiling stranger as well because he might turn out to be a blood-thirsty psychopath.

Stories of terrorist organisations, bandits, dacoits, mafias, and many more have filled our childhood days with terror and suspicion. Perhaps that’s the reason why we don’t talk to strangers. But what happens when a terrorist from India makes the citizens terrified of roaming near forests?

Holding a record of killing 184 people, smuggling sandalwood and tusks of elephants, kidnapping politicians, and making the government lose over 100 crores to catch him, he is none other than a ‘forest brigand’ named Koose Munisamy Veerappan. Though his name contains the word ‘Veer’, he was no less than a coward hiding in the greenery of the forests and attacking people from the back.

Born in a Tamil family in Karnataka, Veerappan committed his first murder at the tender age of 17. Not being able to quit his addiction to dead bodies and gruesome blood battles, he continued to threaten and kill anybody who resisted his illegal activities. Assisting his uncle who was a smuggler, Koose almost wiped the entire elephant population from the Karnataka forests for their tusks. Though his illegal activities always kept him in the pivotal position of news-making, he suddenly became the headline of every newspaper in 1987. Munisamy kidnapped and murdered a forest officer from Tamil Nadu. This was brought to the notice of the government and they finally realised that something has to be done to control him. If this was not enough, he yet again went on a killing spree and took the lives of an IFS officer and a senior IPS officer.

Days went by and his crimes increased day by day. He was creating new trouble every single day for the government and police officers. Killing police officers, kidnapping film stars, and making ransom demands had become his daily routine.

It was the year 2001, a year after he kidnapped a famous actor named Rajkumar. When the police officers demanded Veerappan to surrender, he made a demand. This demand of his shocked the government and police officers. Koose said that he would surrender himself but only on the condition of being pardoned by the state government. His ridiculous demand of being pardoned even after he committed crimes that no one could ever forget was a shock to the entire nation.

Not accepting his offer, A. Ravindranath directly said, “There is no need to accept the surrender offer of a forest brigand. No negotiations with a forest brigand. We will nab him.”

Veerappan had agreed to surrender but at the same time, he wanted the task force to be revoked in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. He also asked for an editor named Mani from a Tamil magazine, to assist the entire process of his surrender. Though Mani had conveyed this message to the CM of Tamil Nadu but did not get any response from him. A long session of message exchanges went on for days until Jayalalithaa came to power as the CM of Tamil Nadu. A no-nonsense person, she immediately deployed search operations and gave the responsibility of handling this entire event in the hands of W.I. Dewaram, a retired DGP.

https://images.app.goo.gl/9qSnXie7m27Rg7Kj8

Veerappan Movie Poster: Well, being famous in the wrong direction has its own perks; Source: Hotstar

The time had finally come when Kali would kill Mahishasura and free the people from his tyranny. It was on October 18, 2004, when the villagers of Gopinatham could rejoice by bursting crackers in joy for the death had finally come to the demon. Koose Munisamy Veerappan lay on his death bed finally. Requesting the Gods sitting in the majestic chairs of heaven to never give him a place in there, people finally burned the poisonous creature with happiness and peace in their eyes.

https://images.app.goo.gl/9qSnXie7m27Rg7Kj8

Veerappan Movie Poster: Well, being famous in the wrong direction has its own perks; Source: Hotstar