Once upon a time, they went bandit-hunting

There was P. Srinivas, a dedicated forest officer who once told this reporter in 1989 that the key to getting the ghost brigand was to win over the villagers who lived in his thrall thanks to abject poverty. Those tactics did push Veerappan to the wall.

Ever trusting, Srinivas was lured into the jungle to discuss surrender terms. He was decapitated and his head sent back as a warning to those who were hunted him.

Or Superintendent of Police P. Harikrishna who, meticulously cultivated the villagers as intelligence sources. Veerappan killed him in a jungle ambush and took his AK-47. ‘‘I aimed at his head and hit it with the first shot’’, the killer of at least 50 men and three times as many elephants later told Nakkeeran, his favoured Tamil daily.

In Mysore, Karnataka, Shakeel Ahmed cannot forget his son, sub-inspector Abdul Kareem, killed in the ambush with Harikrishna.

But among the most famous Veerappan-hunters, and one of the first tasked for this purpose, is ‘Rambo Gopalakrishnan. The former body-builder, commando and Superintendent of Police can’t be found at his ancestral home in Mettur, Tamil Nadu, just outside Veerappan country. He’s in the US for medical treatment for injuries suffered in a landmine ambush nearly a decade ago.

Rambo — known as such for his tree-trunk-like biceps — knows the ignominy of losing weapons, highly-trained men and his pride to Veerappan. ‘‘What is he but an illiterate thief? I will get him by next week, I say’’, he told this reporter in February 1990 after finding a vast stash of sandalwood.

He led a 40-man personally trained commando squad that intended to live off the jungle and think like the enemy. Given to flourishing a 9-mm pistol in one gloved hand and a 9-mm carbine in the other, Gopalakrishnan revelled in the attention he was drawing after finding the sandalwood.

Led by an informant, the sandalwood recovery was the result of a clumsy 1,000-man joint operation between police and forest officials of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. There was much celebration, random machine-gun firing to mock Veerappan but, apart from cold ashes and the quills of a porcupine consumed by his agile gang, it was clear the ghost was gone.

Rambo never got his man, of course, despite the boasts and regular killings — in encounters or executions — of Veerappan’s lieutenants. It wasn’t uncommon to see headlines that said ‘Veerappan on the run, down to five men’ all through the decade.

Two years later, Veerappan — never one to forget a taunt — got Rambo. ‘‘Let that buffalo come after me’’, he said in a release sent to a local Tamil paper at great risk.

As an infuriated Gopalakrishnan plunged into the vast 200 km stretch of the Sathyamangalam-Bargur forest that straddles the borders of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, Veerappan, as always, struck first. Land mines blew up the police van, 22 commandos and informants were killed and Rambo, grievously injured, was done with Veerappan hunting.

‘‘This man has the proverbial stork’s patience’’, says K.U. Shetty, a ramrod-straight, handlebar-moustached former head of Karnataka’s special task force. ‘‘He will wait and wait and wait.’’ Shetty, who hunted Veerappan in 1989-90 and retired later as a director general of police, is now a coffee farmer in the southern district of Chikmagalur.

F.C. Sharma, once head of Tamil Nadu’s special task force and DGP until two years ago, is only too aware of Veerappan’s long run. ‘‘Yes, he has survived for a pretty long time’’, he says, but would rather talk about the financial irregularities plaguing his post-retirement job as chairman of the Royapetta Benefit Fund Society.

The official failings, as he points out, are well known: complacency, the lack of intelligence in the thickly wooded, backward area, and the inability of the police to stay in the distance. ‘‘It may take years, but the state can’t throw up its hands’’, says Sharma. ‘‘The operation must go on.’’