BENGALURU: The bio-park of Bangalore University’s Jnanabharathi campus lost 36 sandalwood trees in slightly more than a year, a reply to an RTI query has revealed. Twenty-six of these were chopped and smuggled by miscreants in December 2017 alone. The 1,000-acre campus is home to the largest number of sandalwood …
Sanjay K Srivastava IFS The article by Anil Agarwal is atrocious with heinous flavour and needs to be debated upon. We have umpteen number of officers who have served in such difficult areas where ‘Veerappans’ operate. Anil Bhardwaj IFS Anil Agarwal’s article is not at all a responsible statement. He …
Excerpts from letter to the editor from M Mahmood Husain, Chennai Forty years ago, Veerappan's haunts in Tamil Nadu forests were mine too, almost every one of them. Every nook and corner was intensely familiar for ten years or more, right from probationer days in the Forest Service. What memories …
Before bowing out of power, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre lifted a seven-year-old ban on the export of sandalwood from Tamil Nadu. The Centre's decision followed an appeal by Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on January 16. The Centre had …
an elephant poacher-turned-sandalwood smuggler, Veerappan has used his intimate knowledge of the territory and his influence and terror among the locals to avoid capture. Over the years he has extracted a heavy price from the state of Karnataka. Crores of rupees have been spent, and 32 police personnel and 10 …
there seems to be more than meets the eye in the case. Veerappan appears to be, despite his notoriety as a law unto himself, the tip of the iceberg, an epiphenomenon. For one, political involvement in sandalwood smuggling is common. Apart from Veerappan, other gangs are known to deal in …
Veerappan, if he knew how to put it, could claim to be a refugee in the war that short-sighted development unleashed on the environment. His grandfather, Muniya Gounder, was a Mettur Dam oustee from Oothanagere village, and moved to Gopinatham village in the 1930s. On his death, his two sons, …
Why did you contact Veerappan? As a journalist, I saw this as a challenge. The man seemed impossible to trace. Then there were rumours that the villagers were suffering on account of police atrocities. We had been informed that the man had killed 2,000 elephants and looted sandalwood worth over …
Attempts to ferret Veerappan out of his lair have not been without some surprising moves on the part of the two state governments. Almost from the time he attained notoriety, there has been talk about the man's political connections. In December 1992, after Veerappa Moily came to power at Karnataka, …
when eight Karnataka forest department personnel held hostage by Veerappan were released in end-August after 45 days in captivity, the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu state governments
Sandalwood smuggler Veerappan's charter of 10 demands to the Tamil Nadu government as the precondition for releasing 3 hostages may provoke the final offensive against him by authorities. In a message sent through his brother Arjunan, Veerappan has declared his acquiescence to surrender and release of deputy superintendent of police …
VEERAPPAN, the legendary sandalwood smuggler, may be nabbed shortly, but putting an end to rampant sandalwood smuggling in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu may prove considerably more difficult. The ban on sandalwood export, in conjunction with anti-people conservation measures, have seen more and more people turn to sandalwood smuggling, with the …
In a chilling reminder of his prowess as an outlaw, sandalwood smuggler and poacher Veerappan and his gang exploded an electronic landmine, which destroyed a van carrying members of a task force set up specially to nab him. Twenty-two policemen died in the April 9 explosion at, which occurred less …
SANDALWOOD smuggling is raising quite a stink in Karnataka, where poacher-smuggler Veerappan has reportedly recruited three retired army personnel and a former BSF jawan to train other gang members in planting mines and staging ambushes. The four, whose identities are still secret, are supposed to have been paid Rs 4.5 …
THE ELUSIVE sandalwood smuggler Veerappan has dealt another blow. Last month, he lured Mysore superintendent of police T Harikrishna and his men into a trap and mercilessly killed him and five other policemen. Harikrishna headed the special task force set up to nab the smuggler and had been 'informed' earlier …
