Veerappan: India's Most Wanted Man [Hardcover]

Sunaad Raghuram (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2002

Veerappan: poacher, smuggler, killer; a fugitive who has held the Indian state to ransom for more than a decade, a man whose name strikes terror in the hearts of the villagers who have been mute witnesses to his crimes; an outlaw whose freedom makes a mockery of the state and police force that has been trying unsuccessfully to bring him to justice; and a semi-literate who, despite attempts to portray himself as a leader of the masses, has only placed himself further on the fringes by his absurd demands and recent involvement with extremist organizations. This text provides a biographical account of this infamous bandit. Born in a small village in Karnataka, Veerappan started his life of crime under the tutelage of Sevi Gounder, a local don with interests in sandalwood smuggling and ivory poaching. After Sevi Gounder "retired" from his lucrative profession, Veerappen became the unquestioned leader of his gang. In April 1990, the Karnataka government finally woke up to the danger posed by his activities and a special task force was constituted to stop him. Finding the net tightening around him, Veerappan turned to an easier way of making money: kidnapping wealthy, influential men for ransom. Thus began the phase that culminated in the kidnapping of the Kannada film superstar Rajkumar on July 30, 2000. With each offence, the police were caught by surprise and Veerappan eluded capture. Some of his accomplices and family members, including his wife, have been arrested; some have even been tortured and killed. Despite all offers of reward and means of persuasion, Veerappan remains beyond the reach of the law. Investigative journalist Sunaad Raghuram's account of Veerappan follows his career from small-time poacher to the most wanted man in India. He examines his relationship with his wife, his brothers and members of his gang and describes in detail the method and madness of the murders and kidnappings Veerappan has been accused of over the years. Based on police records, media reports and interviews with a group of his associates, this is a portrait of the man who is alternately hailed as a messiah and condemned as a murderer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Journalist Raghuram conveys the complexities of rural Indian society in his debut, a sprawling tale of the country's notorious bandit king, with a bounty of four million rupees on his head. Born in 1952 in the poverty-stricken region of Karnataka, Veerappan turned to crime as a teenager and rapidly established himself as a ruthless gangster and smuggler of ivory and sandalwood. In a vicious battle of wills with police, the bandit constructed sophisticated lethal ambushes, while the police tortured and summarily executed Veerappan's henchmen and even detained his wife. Veerappan then escalated the war, abandoning poaching for ransom kidnapping. Beginning with forest rangers, Veerappan progressed to more prominent victims, culminating in his 2000 snatch of the revered, aging film actor Rajkumar in return for whom he made surprisingly political demands, becoming suddenly the political messiah of the Tamil masses, which resulted in legal and political upheaval. Veerappan's saga strikingly resembles those of other gangsters, from Al Capone to the Chinese Triads, as in Veerappan's largesse toward impoverished locals in exchange for covert support. Raghuram's elaborately detailed account becomes somewhat overwhelming with its large cast of cops, gangsters, family members and luckless bystanders and numerous violent encounters, schemes and wilderness treks. Still, it's never dull, and it conveys an important story of contemporary India with descriptive flavor and attention to such social ambiguities as the hatred of police and admiration of the bandits.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Over the past three decades, Koose Muniswamy Veerappan and his criminal gang have committed murder, extortion, dacoity, and kidnapping in the southern Indian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Associated with 119 murders, whose victims include 32 Indian police, Veerappan pops into civilization to kill, rob, or kidnap and then disappears into mountainous forest hideaways. In recent years, he has released a series of audio- and videotapes that seek to portray him as a messiah or cult figure. Raghuram, an investigative journalist, succeeds in describing Veerappan in pathological rather than heroic terms, though his descriptions of police attempts to outwit and capture Veerappan do have the qualities of an action adventure movie. The narrative also reveals police arrogance and bungling, peasant apathy, and the abuse of political and judicial power. To date, this remains an unfinished tale as Veerappan continues his bizarre life of crime. Recommended for public libraries. John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ. Lib., Mt. Pleasant
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; 1st Ed. (U.S.) edition (September 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066210631
• ISBN-13: 978-0066210636
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,306,715 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An incredible book by all accounts, January 15, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Veerappan: India's Most Wanted Man (Hardcover)

In the book, the author Sunaad Raghuram has done one very important thing. And that is, he has very consciously avoided valourising or romanticising a bandit whose exploits are the stuff fiction is made of. This in itself adds a great deal to the credibility of the book and its worth.

This is a book which perfectly captures the starkness of banditry and its consequences, the writing style being a combination of deadpan straightness and descriptive expansiveness.
It tells us all we wanted to know of the infamous Veerappan in a manner which is quite seriously praiseworthy, page after page revealing vignettes of the man, his methods and madnesses which were hitherto completely unknown to the outside world.

Any aficianado of the thriller genre would lap up this book.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Tedious Indian True Crime Tome, January 10, 2003

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Veerappan: India's Most Wanted Man (Hardcover)

I came to this book knowing nothing about Veerappan other than he is a famous Indian bandit who has been at large for thirty years. Unfortunately, what could have been a fascinating account of the transformation of a poor villager to locally respected sandalwood and ivory poacher, to nationally famous extortionist and murderer and Tamil nationalist, instead devolves into a rather boring blow-by-blow report of his activities from the mid-'80s up to and including his famous kidnapping of the aging film star Rajkumar in 2000. Journalist Raghuram does a relatively good job of explaining the bandit's background and introduction to a life of crime, but once he starts detailing his crimes and the police attempts to capture him, the book takes on the stunningly dry tone of official reports.

Raghuram recreates the setting and execution of several dozen of Veerappan's murders-which total around 140, including many many assorted police officers. What emerges is not a tale of a modern-day Robin Hood, but one of a vicious murderer who steals to sustain his own band of forest-dwelling killers. His criminal activities escalated over time, starting with simple poaching, and then expanding to extortion and kidnapping. And once the authorities began to get serious about arresting him, Veerappan engaged in tit-for-tat retribution, killing suspected informers, ambushing police convoys with guns and explosives, attacking police stations, and even targeting specific officers.

The efforts made to capture him are given great attention, and while a certain level of individual police bravery and effort is noted, a more general bureaucratic incompetence underlies everything. The primarily stems from lack of cooperation between the southern states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, where Veerappan operates. Nor is police brutality overlooked, as Raghuram notes the severe treatment of captured members of Veerappan's gang at the hands of the police, ranging from outright murder, to torture, sexual abuse, and indefinite incarceration.

Beyond the general dry prose, the book suffers from a arcane array of abbreviations and acronyms, all of which are explained in the glossary in the back, but make for choppy reading. Similarly, for a Western reader, the barrage of names is likely to be overly intrusive. Do we really need to know the full name of every forester and driver's assistant involved in the narrative? Another constant problem is that key to Veerappan's elusiveness is the geography he operates in, which Raghuram's text brings to life, but is supported by only one remarkably poor map.

Where the book really breaks down in Part V, the final 75 pages, which detail the kidnapping of Rajkumar. Here, the tale of Veerappan starts intertwining with the bewildering details of local and national Indian politics. It's too bad, 'cause Veerappan's new alliance with Marxist Tamil terrorist/freedom fighters is rather intriguing, but it all gets lost in a lengthy section detailing legal battles to keep captured members of his gang in jail.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally a Competent English Book on Veerappan!, November 25, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Veerappan: India's Most Wanted Man (Hardcover)

This is the book for everyone who has been fascinated by Veerappan and is dying to read some initiated reporting rather than idiotic tongue-in-cheek exoticism in foreign press and Indians on web forums screaming "EXTERMINATE VEERAPPAN!...". Raghuram's account is extraordinarily well-written, and provides all the background a foreign reader needs on caste, geography and local history and politics to turn Veerappan from incomprehensible third-world moustache icon to an understandable criminal in a society you can relate to, populated by real men and women.

The writing is very clear and not at all floral; however the many south Indian names on each page combine with the dry English to give the text a real-world beauty quite different from (and superior to) any contrived romanticism. And indeed, what is romantic about this ruthless mass murderer and eco-bandit in a land of suicides and social ills?