Don’t listen to Veerappan, arrest him

Going by the frequency and embarrassing ease with which missives make their way from Veerappan country into our own, it is intriguing why the brigand’s lair should remain so impenetrable still for the police. The much awaited audio cassette — the fourth to emerge from Veerappan’s jungle hideout since he abducted Kannada matinee idol Rajkumar on July 30 — has arrived along with some photographs. It must undoubtedly bring relief to worried fans and well wishers of Rajkumar that he is well and apparently unharmed. The governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, however, continue to hold their breath. They await the return of Nakkeeran‘s R R Gopal, who again, it may be recalled, had little trouble in accessing the fierce outlaw; Gopal will reportedly return in a day or two with Veerappan’s response to the state governments’ response to his charter of demands. As the brigand takes his time to deliberate, and as two state governments do little but alternately twiddle their thumbs and hope for the emissary’s"cordial negotiations" with the brigand to yield "good news", the farce continues.

Meanwhile, certain political players in Tamil Nadu have raised their voice in support of Veerappan’s demands. Though the outlaw himself has refrained from demanding it so far, they have urged that he be granted amnesty. In a sense, this only confirms what everybody has suspected all along — that Veerappan has political support, and that he could not have remained a free man for so long without the protective umbrella extended by political groups. Yet, the mounting evidence of the nexus between the politician and the brigand still disturbs. Among the TADA detenues whose release Veerappan has demanded, rank members of Tamil extremist outfits; speculation is rife that elements of the Tamil National Liberation Army (TNLA) and its splinter group, the Tamil National Retrieval Force (TNRF) may have teamed up with the outlaw in the Sathyamangalam forests. And this is not all. Veerappan’s political circle, it would appear, is wider still. There are indications that apart from disparate extremist elements operating asfringe groups in Tamil Nadu, it includes mainstream political parties such as the PMK and the MDMK. It is not incidental here that PMK leader Ramadoss has made noises that sound suspiciously sympathetic to the Bandit King in the course of the ongoing kidnap drama.

Will Veerappan emerge as the messiah of the Tamil cause? Will he be allowed to take credit for protecting and promoting Tamil interests — the resolution of the vexed, long-running Cauvery dispute, for instance? Is a wannabe politician holding aloft the banner of Tamil pride waiting to emerge from his jungle hide-out? Basically, will a robber and murderer’s charter of demands be accorded the dignity of a political manifesto? These are questions that political outfits which are today owning Veerappan as their own would do well to seriously ask themselves. They might realise that the Tamil cause that they hold so dear demands that they distance themselves immediately from the antics of a desperate criminal.