HEAD-HUNTERS

Other STF chiefs who have trailed Veerappan:

Walter Dawaram: The former Tamil Nadu DGP is credited with pushing Veerappan into a corner H.T. Sangliana: The 1967 batch IPS officer was in charge of an STF-BSF operation in 2001 J.P. Mirji: He negotiated with Veerappan for the release of Karnataka minister H. Nagappa. The talks failed and Nagappa was killed.

A twirl of the whisker can sometimes say it better than words. A small-time craftsman in Bangalore summed up the mood of the masses with the stroke of a brush, when he painted a handlebar moustache on a Ravana bust.

It?s a good thing the craftsman didn?t have to build a bust of Rama. He would probably have dressed the Hindu god in green battle fatigues and given him a tonsured head and a short-cropped bushy moustache.

Symbolism is running high this Dasara season. Veerappan, the evil force, has finally fallen. And K. Vijayakumar, the Tamil Nadu Special Task Force (STF) chief ? representing the righteous ? has returned home a victor.

Kudos are flowing in from every quarter for the 1975 batch IPS officer, known in Tamil Nadu as the man the chief minister trusts. He?s been promoted to the rank of director general of police. Chief minister J. Jayalalithaa is going gaga over his strategising skills. Village folk living around the Satyamangalam forest and Male Maheshwar Hills ? Veerappan?s area of operation ? are hailing him as the man who rid them of the STF?s excesses. And the local media is going overboard about how the STF chief patiently plotted and planned to nab the elusive brigand.

But in the face of all the fame, the suave and smooth-talking Madras Christian College product is modesty personified. Operation Cocoon has been an out-and-out team effort, he has been repeatedly stressing. ?We worked as one hand, with one mission,? he said at a post-encounter press conference. He even had a good word to put in about his vanquished opponent. Vijayakumar called Veerappan a ?worthy foe, one who was not easy to get?.

Vijayakumar, who likes to study international relations in his spare time, is sharing credit even with the stars. He recalled that an astrologer had already predicted the fall of Veerappan; the cop was only doing the needful. And when Operation Cocoon was completed successfully, the STF chief immediately headed for the Bannari Amman temple, near the Satyamangalam base camp, and got his head tonsured. The thanksgiving does not end here. Next week, the 51-year-old officer goes on a padyatra from the Bannari Amman temple to Chennai, a walk of about 500 km, to pay homage to the gods for a deed well done.

The padyatra might be Vijayakumar?s victory lap, but critics insist that the story is not over yet. As always, now that the initial euphoria about the death of a man who spread dread and destruction in the forests of southern India has died down, some prickly issues are being raised. Why was Veerappan not caught alive? How does the STF explain the precision bullet wounds ? on Veerappan?s temple, chest and hip ? when he was allegedly sitting inside an ambulance? What is the mystery of the missing left eye?

But Vijayakumar ? busy receiving humongous bouquets from political bigwigs including Jayalalithaa ? is not telling. On the contrary, he lost his cool when a few reporters asked him some uncomfortable questions. ?I would have been very happy to capture him alive. But when he opened fire, we had to retaliate,? was all that he would say at a press conference in Dharmapuri.

Not everybody is ready to buy that. Former Veerappan lawyer . Chandrashekharan says the STF boss is bluffing his way out of a botched-up operation. ?The STF acted in an indecent haste to eliminate Veerappan and his men,? he says. Chandrashekharan believes that even if the encounter did happen, the STF could have drained Veerappan and his men of their bullets and then captured them alive. ?It wasn?t an impossible task,? he says. The Chennai-based lawyer plans to petition the National Human Rights Commission to inquire into the encounter. Veerappan?s widow has said her husband may have killed himself.

But Vijayakumar remains unfazed. The cop, who says he does yoga every day and enjoys jogging, stresses that Veerappan?s death came at the end of an exercise that entailed ?reviving a dormant information network and psychologically lulling Veerappan into complacency?.

As STF chief, Vijayakumar clashed with Veerappan for the second time in his career. Known as a Jayalalithaa man ? he was the one in charge of forming her elite Special Security Group (SSG) ? Vijayakumar sought a transfer to the Border Security Force (BSF) when the AIADMK government fell in 1996. He was a part of the BSF team that assisted the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu STF in anti-Veerappan operations.

When Jayalalithaa returned to power in Tamil Nadu, so did Vijayakumar. The man who opted for the IPS instead of the generally more coveted administrative services, won for himself the plum post of Chennai police commissioner. But the officer faced severe criticism when the editors of The Hindu were arrested and a national uproar followed. Jayalalithaa immediately sent the cop packing to the jungles of Satyamangalam for some brigand-hunting.

The IPS officer, however, is well known in police circles for his meticulous planning and low-profile approach. ?I decided not to be a bull in a china shop,? he said in a recent interivew.

Second, the task force chief gave the organisation a complete image make-over. The STF organised medical camps and social welfare programmes for tribals living around the Satyamangalam forests. The idea was to create goodwill and not extract information. ?This helped reduce Veerappan?s support base,? says the officer.

As far as Vijayakumar is concerned, Veerappan is history. He?s busy shining his shoes to walk the victory lap to Chennai. If there are any unpleasant bits about the encounter, they are safely buried six feet under the ground.