Veerappan Episode 2

[Latarsha Dorrance]

Thenew documentary series titled The Hunt for Veerappan, streaming on Netflix, throws light on the life and death of the forest brigand who was shot to death in 2004 by Special Task Force (STF) personnel from Tamil Nadu.

However, his earlier life of crime is not detailed in the four-part series that revolves around interviews of some of the authentic voices, such as his wife, his gang members, his village people, forest and police officers and a couple of journalists connected to his life during this period.

She narrates how he proposed to her when she was only 15 and how she fell for him, then 37 years old and slinging a gun on his shoulder instantly. As the series shows, she still is in awe of him, nearly 20 years after his death, justifying his acts as mostly retaliatory.

Even early on in his life, he knew the ways of the forests and wildlife intimately. He claimed to have shot an elephant when he was only 12, and the money from it pushed him into the ivory trade with the help of a local dealer.

The Netflix series begins from the time both the States constituted the Special Task Force (STF) for the sole purpose of capturing him in 1990, after he killed four policemen in revenge for a record seizure of sandalwood.

The beheading of P. Srinivas, a deputy conservator of forests and head of STF, is a classic example. Srinivas, a Gandhian, had camped at his village Gopinatham and was ushering in welfare schemes in the village. Veerappan tricked him into coming into the forests, shot him, burnt the body and beheaded him. There are voices justifying his act as it came after his dear sister ended her life, for being friendly to Srinivas, who had got her a nurse job.

Throughout the four episodes, the storyline, cinematography and editing keep the documentary series engaging and riveting; it almost pulls off entirely what it sets out to achieve, despite coming close to devil-worshipping and nearly forgetting that he was pure evil.

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The four-episode series, directed by Selvamani Selvaraj, opens strangely not with the many headlines Veerappan made over the years, but with romance. From the real-life Muthulakshmi Veerappan, we hear first the story of how she chose to marry a man branded a dreaded and elusive bandit. Yet, the scene also leaves you uneasy. Veerappan was in his late thirties when he asked her to marry him, Muthulakshmi says. She was fourteen or fifteen years old at the time, she also recalls.

There have been several previous attempts in Tamil and Kannada to tell this story, though The Hunt for Veerappan might be the most of the lot so far. Veerappan shook up an entire generation, from the general public to journalists to high-ranking politicians, and the police force of not one but two states. How they will each view this series, remains to be seen.

Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.

Who was Veerappan? A criminal or a rebel? The question haunts the new Netflix docuseries The Hunt for Veerappan, created by Selvamani Selvaraj. Segmented into four episodes, The Hunt for Veerappan looks back at the poacher, who managed to evade and escape the efforts of the police and the special task forces of two states for almost two decades. Facts like Veerappan was the subject of India's longest and costliest manhunt are thrown in . But it is the politics of disparity and an impossible central relationship that guides this sprawling saga to piece together the phenomenon that was Veerappan. (Also read: Poacher review: Richie Mehta crafts an atmospheric tale on illegal ivory trade)

The second episode, titled The Bloodbath, captures, in haunting and terrifying detail, how Veerappan confronted each new challenge thrown in by the Special Task Force. The murders continue. Blood spills. The unpacking of the details are integrated into the narrative with immense control by co-writers Forest Borrie, Apoorva Bakshi, Kimberly Hassett, and Selvaraj. These facts are presented with the archival pictures and the present day comments shared by the gang members, Muthulakshmi, some of the residents of Gopinatham and the task officers, including 'Tiger' Ashok Singh.

The clincher here is the tone. The documentary acts as a prism for the version(s) of the incidents, the revelations and the truths to co-exist and confound one another. In The Truth of Veerappan, truth exists in the porous layers, in the sights and sounds of the dense jungle- creating a richly atmospheric canvas for revelation. The tone pulls off a dangerous balancing act- coming close to sympathizing the criminal yet stopping just short. The movement is not scattershot and insistent. Even as perspectives shift and polarize, the central narrative takes confident strides, superbly edited together by the team of Ajit K. Nair, Jack Price, and Weston Curie.

Then there is the central relationship that injects an unwieldy complexity into the narrative, as Muthulakshmi emerges with her version of the story. Their bond forms the tormented crux of The Hunt for Veerappan, as Selvaraj invites her perspective into the investigation. In one harrowing scene, she recounts the torture- physical and mental, at the hands of the Karnataka police after getting arrested. Even as The Hunt for Veerappan proceeds to address the horrifying murders and criminal activities that the man commits, the show also interrogates the system- unable and unjust to meet the demands of one man. The kidnapping of superstar Rajkumar and his subsequent release- what were the questions that were still being asked and how far were they revealed? Curiously, no one from the family of the star makes an appearance.

The Hunt for Veerappan works best, when its focus remains uncompromisingly on the devastating residues of this decades-long manhunt. Several police officers killed, a number of families imprisoned in connection to him, and so many unaccounted stories that remain buried under the shadows of pain and trauma. By that chilling end, I was somehow left shaken by its captivating visuals and reflective abundance.

Way before true crime podcasts and documentary series became a thing, following the news was the only way to get all the scoop. And it was during those times that Veerappan, the brigand who terrorised those living near the forests of the border of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, was a menace. Recently, Netflix dropped its latest documentary series, The Hunt for Veerappan, directed by Selvamani Selvaraj, which explores the life and times of the notorious bandit and how he was killed by the Special Task Force (STF) in 2004.

The last episode of The Hunt for Veerappan, titled The Way Out, is set during Veerappan's previous year, 2004 when the STF realised that getting into the forest and capturing the bandit was impossible. Hence, the only way to get him was to lure him out of the forest area. By this time, the STF was being led by ADGP Vijay Kumar with his second-in-command Senthamarai Kannan. Vijay and Senthamarai placed Veerappan's wife, Muthulakshmi, who had been in police custody for about 8 years until then, in Coimbatore in a house with two women. One of the women was their covert agent whose job was to encourage Muthulakshmi to contact her husband, and when she finally did, the authorities had plans to kill him on sight. But, when Veerappan was just 20 km from the site, Muthulakshmi felt it was all very suspicious and called off the meeting, and the STF lost again. But they learned a valuable lesson here, that Veerappan could be lured out and caught, so they hatched a new scheme.

Vijay and Senthamarai started planting informants in the local village so they would get all the information on Veerappan. One of the locals, who worked near the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border, became their informer as he often visited Veerappan to supply groceries. This man was slowly gaining Veerappan's trust. Even in the series, his identity has been kept a secret, as neither of the two governments has let this secret out.

It was around this time that Veerappan contacted Tamil activist Kolathur Mani. Veerappan was getting tired as the authorities were constantly on his tail, his eyesight was worsening, and he wanted eye surgery. He also told Mani he tried to move to Eelam, Sri Lanka. Mani confesses in the series that as soon as Veerappan told him all of this, he went to the authorities. Veerappan was also looking for a contact to get weapons and it was then that Senthamarai pretended to be a weapons supplier named Muligan and formed a business relationship with Veerappan over the phone. For the next 3-4 months, he supplied Veerappan with weapons that looked like they were coming from LTTE and promised that he would extract Veerappan to Sri Lanka and even dangled the carrot that he would arrange a meeting with Prabhakaran as well.

Posing as Muligan, Senthamarai asked Veerappan to choose a date for extraction, and he decided on October 18, the day when he ultimately died. The police van used in the mission was made to look like an ambulance and had secret cameras installed inside. Veerappan was with three of his men, and as per Senthamarai, he seemed pretty relaxed. The stage was set when the ambulance was on the highway as the snipers and commandos were in position. When a lorry stopped ahead of the ambulance, Veerappan looked outside but wasn't alarmed, but a minute later, he knew he was trapped. Senthamarai recalled that the first shot went inside Veerappan's head, and he died on the spot. "He died without fighting," Senthamarai shared.

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