India’s most wanted fugitive, Koose Muniswamy Veerappan, accused of more than 100 murders and on the run for decades, has been shot dead after driving into a police trap, officials said on Tuesday.
The death of Veerappan, known for his trademark handlebar moustache and said to be around 60 years old, brings to a close the longest manhunt in Indian police history.
The bandit, who leapt to notoriety when he held Indian film star Rajkumar hostage for more than 100 days in 2000, was killed in a forest in southeastern Tamil Nadu state, said special task force (STF) chief K Vijay Kumar.
He said police, acting on a tip-off, surrounded Veerappan and three associates while they were travelling in an ambulance near Dharmapuri in the west of the state late on Monday.
”We announced on the speakers fitted to our jeeps that since he was surrounded and there was no way he could escape, he and his associates should give themselves up,” Kumar said by telephone from Dharmapuri.
”There was silence for about a minute and then there was firing from the other side. We took cover and returned the fire, killing Veerappan and his three associates.”
He added that the bodies had been taken to Dharmapuri hospital, where witnesses said hundreds of locals turned up trying to see Veerappan and asking police to put his body on public display.
Photographers who were allowed into the hospital said Verappan had trimmed his moustache and was wearing white dress instead of his usual green jungle fatigues.
Kumar later told a media briefing that ”Operation Cocoon”, which netted the forest brigand, had been meticulously planned over several weeks.
”We acted on information that he had an eyesight problem and was seeking medical help,” the STF chief told reporters at his Sathyamangalam camp, about 60km from the site of the operation. The press conference was telecast live in Madras on a Tamil news TV channel.
The ambulance in which Veerappan and his gang were trapped was ”our vehicle”, driven by an STF operative, Kumar said.
Kumar said STF men had operated in various villages and hamlets as beggars, mendicants, bus drivers and cowherds trying to collect information on the movements of Veerappan, who had a bounty of 50-million rupees ($1,1-million) on his head.
”Some of the men even spent time as prisoners in jails to gather useful intelligence,” the STF chief said.
Constable Murugesan was assigned the task of watching the village of Papparanpatti, close to where that final encounter took place.
The policeman mingled with the locals, who provided the first break by saying Veerappan needed eye treatment.
Police in the guise of civilians offered help to get the bandit to a local hospital and converted a police van into an ambulance, with a constable disguised as its driver.
”Veerappan was always at an advantage when he was hiding in the jungles and we went combing for him. Now it was our turn to wait in hiding for him as he drove into the trap,” the STF chief said.
”We got Veerappan into a shell or a cocoon — that is, an enclosed space of a vehicle before moving in to get him,” he said.
Tamil Nadu’s 500-strong STF was set up solely to catch the fugitive, who had a deep knowledge of the 7 000sq km jungle region straddling the southern states of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Apart from poaching several hundred elephants for their tusks and illegally felling thousands of sandalwood trees, Veerappan allegedly murdered more than 100 people, mostly police and forest officials, as well as villagers he suspected of being police informers.
In addition to kidnapping film star Rajkumar, Veerappan also abducted former Karnataka state minister Hannur Nagappa from his home in 2002 and threatened to behead him unless a jailed Tamil nationalist leader was released.
Nagappa was found dead three months after his disappearance. – Sapa-AFP