This story is from October 18, 2014

10 years later - They put brigand’s legacy behind

Ten years after its notorious son, forest brigand Veerappan was gunned down, Gopinatham is trying hard to exorcise its past and set out on a new course.
10 years later - They put brigand’s legacy behind
GOPINATHAM (Karnataka-TN border): Ten years after its notorious son, forest brigand Veerappan was gunned down, Gopinatham is trying hard to exorcise its past and set out on a new course.
The last village on the Karnataka side of the border with Tamil Nadu is now reaping the fruits of modernity: pucca homes have sprung up, a government high school has opened, a government hospital has come up, and a KSRTC bus makes daily trips to the village, linking it with the outside world.

But Gopinatham residents, who were once branded ‘neighbours, relatives, family friends and associates’ of Veerappan, admit that shrugging off the brigand’s legacy is easier said than done. They rue they are still on the margins of development: doctors continue to avoid the town like the plague, forcing the nurse at the hospital to double as doctor, the school is short-staffed and without a com pound wall, stands forlorn in the wild countryside. The once-a-day bus trip rarely comes in handy for residents in emergencies.
The only solace is that able-bodied men found it next to impossible to live in the village when Veerappan was alive. In the aftermath of Veerappan's death in an encounter with Special Task Force (STF) near Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu on October 18, 2004, those who had fled the village began returning home.
Village head GP Bhoopalan, 62, recalls: “I was a happy farmer with my four acres of land. Things changed in the early 1990s when STF men arrived. During the day, they would pick us up for questioning.
Veerappan would drop by at night and warn us against informing the STF. I decided to shift my family to Mettur, where I opened a grocery shop. I returned only in 2002, after Veerappan’s activities slowed down.” Nallur Madaiah, in his late 60s, recalls how he shifted his family to Kollegal after Veerappan killed DFO Srinivas and launched a manhunt for him, suspecting him to be a police informer. “By 1993, he had killed seven members of my family and I had no choice but to leave the village.
I returned only in 2005, resumed farming and have now constructed a house,” he says.
Madaiah’s son Mani is a teacher with the government school in Athur, a border town in Tamil Nadu. “It was Veerappan’s threat that made me pursue my education. Or I would have remained here,” Mani admits.
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