No self-respecting state allows such nonsense

‘‘It’s too dangerous. The clever thing is to pretend to be asleep, jaan hai to jahaan hai...(the world matters only if you live),’’ said the Lalaji.

‘‘You are such a chicken and you claim to be a man,’’ the wife said, tauntingly.

‘‘I may be a man, bhaagwan, but I am your man, not that of the robbers. So go back to sleep,’’ the Lalaji ended the argument.

Agnivesh used that story to mock at whoever happened to be his political rival at that particular point of time. Today, you could read it to Messrs S M Krishna and M Karunanidhi or, in fact, the entire Indian state. You might even get Veerappan to smile in appreciation.

The crux of the current Veerappan story is not the kidnapping of Rajkumar. He is somebody the Kannadigas love and adore and everything possible should now be done to secure his release. The issue is the alacrity with which the state is bending over backwards to accommodate Veerappan. The issue also is the way he has been allowed to run such an evil little empire in such a small area for more than a decade. He is supposed to have killed 130 people, including senior police officers. Yet no government, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala or the Centre, has ever shown any keenness to go after him. No senior police officer has declared the killer of so many of his men, his police force’s enemy No. 1. No K P S Gill, no Rustomji, Ribeiro or Ashwini Kumar has set out in any determined pursuit of this most destructive vermin of southern India.

In the Sixties, the Madhya Pradesh police showed much greater resolve fighting the dacoits. As did V P Singh two decades later in Uttar Pradesh. Veerappan’s, on the other hand, looks like an open-and-shut case of complicity. Or, of a state that is among the world’s toughest, even brutal, when it comes to fighting insurgencies that challenge its authority but is reduced to being a shameful accomplice while dealing with law-breakers. In the Northeast, we have unleashed armies and helicopters to chase after insurgents that broke fewer laws than Veerappan. In Mizoram, the Indian Air Force bombed the daylights out of Aizawl city to crush a small insurgency. But we have never even made a half-serious attempt at catching Veerappan, who operates in a tiny forest area and, going by recent photographs of Rajkumar in his custody, is close enough to civilisation to have a generous supply of two-litre Bisleri bottles. Surely, if anybody still tells you they haven’t been able to catch Veerappan because he lives in such a thick, endless forest, they must be like either Agnivesh’s Lalaji who would rather sleep through the robbery, or his accomplices.

This is a peculiar Indian mindset, that somehow the breaking of the law is not as serious a crime as, say, challenging the political might of the state. We never, therefore, bothered too much about Dawood Ibrahim until the Bombay blasts happened. Before that he was seen, and photographed, dark glasses, cellphones and all, in the members’ box at the Sharjah cricket stadium every year. It is not as if we are even now trying very hard to bring him back, but at least now we see him as a bad guy. In comparison, what has Veerappan done? He has just killed a hundred-odd people, destroyed some forest and massacred elephants. So why waste time going after him, particularly as elephants do not take recourse to public interest litigation? Quite apart from the Rajkumar kidnapping, if the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu governments really have any conscience, and good sense, left, they should at least start suspending every police officer assigned to head the numerous task forces set up to hunt down Veerappan in the past. Unless the fear is that, once cornered, the police officers might tell the real story, of how the protection racket works and how deep the nexus between wildlife smugglers and local politicians is.

The really scary thing about the Veerappan story is the shameless romanticisation of the forest brigand. He is no Robin Hood or Tarzan. This is not medieval Europe and Tarzan, actually, used his superhuman powers to save wildlife. It is also scary that so many people across the country see Veerappan as some kind of a joke. His very existence, on the other hand, mocks at our system of law and order. The very chief ministers who are now spending all their time poring over tape recorders to listen to his latest messages never bothered to make his capture, or extermination, one of their election promises or political objectives. As long as his depredations were confined to the jungle, he was out of sight, out of mind. He spoilt the party by picking up Rajkumar.

That is not the way civilised states, soft or hard, treat their system of laws. In Britain, Blair’s son goes to jail for merely getting drunk and misbehaving. Clinton faces such an inquisition for sexual misdemeanour. Here, we have built a tradition of ‘‘sorting out’’ the really serious organised crime totally outside the system of laws. The Sarvodayis set the tradition in the Sixties by negotiating clemency for dacoits. Then, smuggler Haji Mastan was absolved of all sins simply because he was seen as an Emergency victim. The Rt Hon Phoolan Devi will regale you with the stories of her days as the dacoit queen in the Chambal ravines, probably next week when you run into her, silk sari and all, on the lawns of Rashtrapati Bhawan when the President hosts the creme de la creme of the capital on Independence Day. Who knows, another couple of years and you might even find the Rt Hon Veerappan there. Or, maybe, it is a good idea to send India’s ace peace negotiator Gopal of Nakkeeran to talk to the Hizbul Mujahideen instead. He might do better than poor Kamal Pande.

What kind of a state institutionalises such nonsense? We specialise in not catching our crooks. Forget Dawood. Prabhakaran, accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, carries on. We probably haven’t even completed the formality of asking the Sri Lankan government to look for him, nor are we likely to ask for him to be turned over if and when he surfaces for talks with his government. He may have killed our most prominent politician for actions he took as our prime minister, but we are happy to have him out of sight, out of mind. Ditto for Mast Gul, the man who burnt Chrar-e-Sharif.

Forget the hard state/soft state issue, or the irony of a nuclear weapons power being in such awe of a petty thug. No civilised state puts up with all this. No self-respecting state allows a Veerappan to roam about freely for more than a decade. This is a fit case for the Centre to intervene. Give Karnataka the NSG commandos and whatever else it might require to end this embarrassment and, if the local politicians complain, try them for complicity.