Veerappan: India's Most Wanted Man Hardcover

as a veerappan fan i found this book very good. Author sunaad did not fall in either veerappan side or on police side. He mentioned atrocities of both sides. There are few not clear or false items but other than that book is very good and a must read for all south indian news followers. as veerappan got killed by police recently. i am really interested if the same author can write a book regarding his death. i am sure veerappan did not get killed by police encounter and police is not telling the truth.My god rest Verappan's soul.

Veerappan and his gang sort of remind me of the hole-in-the-wall gang in the U.S. old wild-west days. They hid out in the wild where nobody lived and few could go. The author, Ragburham, describing the seven thousand square miles of territory in the heart of south central India where Veerappan roamed at will, wrote "The jagged hills, the deep gorges, the vast valleys, and the thick undergrowth combine to make it an area that is not just inhospitable but almost inaccessible." It's a book of endless tales of the police attempting to find and capture or destroy Veerappan, but, like Osama bin Laden or the drug lords of Mexico and South America, Veerappan, with the aid of locals who are both indebted to and fearful of him, evades all efforts to neutralize him. The fact that the locals are almost as afraid of the large proportion of police who are corrupt and cruel as they are of of Veerappan makes them less likely to help the police and more likely to pretend to know nothing and to have seen nothing. Veerappan apparently has a natural talent for leadership and planning criminal operations, which makes his ambushes of police patrols and assaults on police stations come off smoothly like well-planned military operations. He started his career as a poacher, thief, and smuggler of high-value wood and ivory, but he gradually progressed to murder, kidnapping, and association with Tamil-separatist revolutionaries. This was an interesting book, but not a spell-binder which I couldn't put down. I was put off somewhat by the lists of tongue-twisting Indian names, and, as a Christian, I was uncomfortable with Veerappan and his gang sometimes worshiping stones, and other dark practices. For instance, the author describes one occasion on which "Veerappan and his men were away performing a special pooja at a forest temple to the goddess Kali. Propitiating the goddess, know for her appetite for blood, was a ritual they performed every new moon night." It's an interesting book for those who want to know a little more about how the poor live in the remote jungles of India.

This was a fun book to read. Written well, this true story tells about one of Indias most wanted criminals/ terrorist. This book has a dramatic ending, with non stop action all the way through.

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.