One debate over: Bandit gets a peaceful burial

At the crack of dawn today, 12-year-old girl V. Prabha had the first glimpse of her father in the past six years. Unfortunately for her, it ...

At the crack of dawn today, 12-year-old girl V. Prabha had the first glimpse of her father in the past six years. Unfortunately for her, it was the last time she saw him too. ‘‘I saw him when I was a litte child. Now I can’t see him anymore,’’ said Prabha, as she dropped a handful of sand on the slain body of Veerappan.

On a grey morning in a shrub jungle at Moolakadai in the foothills of Sendra Perumal Malai, Veerappan was laid to rest alongside his lawyer-nephew, Mani, who always wished to reform the brigand until he died in an accident last year. As the brigand’s two daughters and wife Muthulakshmi wailed inconsolably, his bullet-ridden body, wrapped in white sheet, was removed from the ambulance and lowered into a six-feet pit beside a piece of rock at 6.05 am. His lone surviving brother, Mathaiyan, who is out on parole from Coimbatore Jail, garlanded him.

While the police and the Special Task Force wanted the body to be cremated last night itself, Veerappan’s relatives insisted on burying him. After heated arguments with the police at night, the body lay in the ambulance for seven hours.

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The authorities finally agreed to a quiet burial this morning. But only a few relatives were allowed to witness the ritual. An angry Muthulakshmi shouted at the police personnel: ‘‘Your job ends with killing him. Now let me do the last rites.’’

Hinting that Veerappan had probably surrendered and had not been captured, she said an STF policewoman had approached her recently to negotiate for his surrender, ‘‘but I turned down the offer’’, she said.

Meanwhile, Veerappan’s lawyer, Chandrasekhar told the media that he would petition the State Human Rights Commission to probe the manner in which Veerappan was killed. PDK leader Kolathur Mani, in whose farm Veerappan is said to have worked as a small boy, said they would move court for an investigation into the encounter.

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