Sequel to Veerappan drama, TV serial looks at human side

“I have delved deep into his psyche and I have shown how he had been exploited by forest officials, the police and politicians, his passionate outrage against exploitation of the poor, his anger when women were tortured and raped by STF personnel during their hunt for him and the way he retaliated against the wrong-doings,” V Gowthaman, who directed the serial, told The Indian Express. “We shot in villages where Veerappan is still deified and referred to as Anna (brother),” he said.

A small-time film director-turned-television serial maker, Gowthaman has to his credit a 77-episode serial on Auto Shankar, an autorickshaw driver-turned-don, who reigned over Thiruvanmiyur in Chennai with political and police patronage. Accused of several murders, Shankar was later sentenced to death by the courts. Gowthaman serialised the autobiography (on Makkal TV) which Shankar wrote in prison and which was featured in 77 issues of the Tamil magazine Nakkeeran, before he was executed in the mid-1990s.

Gowthaman spent nearly three years researching on Veerappan, claiming to have traversed the length and breadth of the bandit’s trail and hideouts in the deep jungles. “We shot in more than 20 villages bordering the forest range of Sathyamangalam in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, frequented by Veerappan and spent 110 days in the deep forest and shot in precarious and risky conditions there,” he said. adding: “Veerappan always fascinated me and even years back when he was alive I had been determined to take a serial on him. A three-hour feature film would not have done justice.”

He started shooting about eight months back with blessings from Ramadoss. Recently, he faced a litigation from Veerappan’s wife, Muthulakshmi, who sought a stay on the telecast of the serial in the city sessions court, on the grounds that any kind of depiction of her husband would “wound” the feelings of her two teenaged daughters and cause “a lot of trauma”. However, Sandhana Kaadu won the case and is all set for a mega start in a week’s time. The serial will be telecast for an hour from 8.30 pm, through the week.

The director used a nearly 1,000-strong cast, of whom only 25 are small-time television and film actors, the remaining being villagers sporting grease paint and facing the arc lights for the first time. “The villagers put up a great performance,” said Gowthaman, who promises “to have revealed the hushed up truths in Veerappan’s life and unravelled the mysteries” leading to Operation Cocoon involving the final ambush in which Veerappan was killed at Papparapatti near Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu. “I have kept very closely to the truth and the real incidents in Veerappan’s life. There is no distortion of facts,” he said.

Veerappan is played by Karate Raja and Muthulakhsmi by new comer Deepika. A few of the bandit’s aides would sport true names, while all other characters, including those resembling key police and STF officers involved in the decades-long Veerappan hunt, have been given fictitious names.