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Abducted by Veerappan, 18 years in jail, Amburaj finds freedom on stage

The three were promised freedom in 15 days, but ended up as Veerappan’s “aides” for the next 18 months before they were allowed to surrender as part of a deal struck by the outlaw and police.

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It was a Monday, it was 1996. It may have been September or October. But what Amburaj remembers clearly is what happened when he and his two cousins — one 14, the other 16 like him — spread out their lunch beside a pond, leaving their cows to graze nearby.

They were surrounded by five men in uniforms — two of them wielding, as Amburaj would learn later, self-loading rifles and three armed with .303-calibre rifles. The boys were taken behind a huge rock inside the jungle surrounding their village, Kaludaipaali, in Tamil Nadu’s Erode district. And there, they came across a face they had seen on lookout notices — that of Koosai Muniswamy Veerappan, then 42.

That day changed Amburaj’s life, and that of his cousins Appasamy and Thangaraj.

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The three were promised freedom in 15 days, but ended up as Veerappan’s “aides” for the next 18 months before they were allowed to surrender as part of a deal struck by the outlaw and police. But the deal collapsed and Amburaj spent the next 18 years in a Mysuru jail for kidnapping nine Karnataka forest officials from Gundal, and on charges under the Arms Act and Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

Today, at the age of 36, Amburaj’s life has changed — again.

Festive offer

Released by the Karnataka government, along with his cousins, on August 15, as a “reformed convict”, he is preparing to step into the world of theatre — as a fulltime artist with Sankalpa, a theatre group run by Hulugappa Kattimani, a well-known name in Karnataka.

Having been associated with Sankalpa while in prison, Amburaj has already acted in over 20 plays, including some based on Shakespearean classics and scripts written by Girish Karnad. Again, it was through Sankalpa that Amburaj met his wife, Rohini, a murder convict who was granted freedom on Republic Day this year — they got married in Erode during parole in 2011, before returning to prison the next day.

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When The Indian Express spoke to Amburaj last week over the phone, he was at his village, along with Rohini and their nine-month-old baby. He sounded wary and a bit tired, having had to shuttle between the local hospital and home to be with his mother who is unwell. He will join Sankalpa soon, he said. “I was without hope. Sankalpa showed me a different world, taught me that there is space for everyone in this world. Through theatre, I gained so many friends and mentors,” he said.

But then, Amburaj’s story is also about his time with Veerappan. “My words should not be used to glorify my past, they shouldn’t portray Veerappan as a hero,” he said.

The anecdotes are many, and revealing — of life inside the jungle with a man who evaded the law for nearly 30 years before being killed in a gunbattle with a Special Task Force on October 18, 2004, in Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu.

Within two hours of meeting Veerappan, Amburaj asked him why he chose the life of an outlaw and killed people and animals. Veerappan responded by blaming the system, government and politicians, and claiming that he wanted to surrender but was yet to get “a suitable package”.

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At the time, Veerappan had only 10 men in his team. The day after the abduction, Amburaj said, the group left Anthiyur forest, on the move constantly, carrying over 50 kg of weapons and provisions. Amburaj recalled moving through Sathyamangalam, towards the Mudumalai and Bandipur forests at the Karnataka border, and certain parts of the Nilgiris near Ooty.

The journeys lasted for months with a week-long break in between at “safe patches” in high altitudes. During the night, when he hoped to escape, Amburaj could see fully lit towns in the valleys down below, of Ootty, Muthumala and Bannari.

But soon, the boys adapted to a life in the forest. Amburaj claimed that during the period with Veerappan, there were no murders or violent attacks, except for the kidnap of the forest officials in 1997. He denied any active role in the abduction but said he was with Veerappan at the time.

Living in the forest was an education, of sorts for Amburaj — of watching Veerappan detecting the presence of humans from the way birds flew or noises made by animals; of standing guard for long hours on top of rocks and trees. Whenever they asked Veerappan about their release, he said it would happen “at the right time”.

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Veerappan cherished memories of having watched movies of his favourite Tamil actors MGR (former Tamil Nadu CM M G Ramachandran) and Sivaji Ganesan. The bandit also tuned in to BBC Tamil and Kannada news stations on a satellite radio gifted by a well-wisher in Chennai. His favourite past-time was listening to Tamil programmes on Radio Veritas 846 of the Philippines during nights, he said, adding that Veerappan used to record messages on a tiny Sony recorder.

There were rules to follow, too. The meat of Black Langurs was a favourite dish, and gang-members were allowed to smoke beedis at limited intervals — liquor and women were banned. Amburaj recalled having bathed only five-six times in those months, as they couldn’t afford to be away from their weapons.

For a bandit carrying a Rs 50-lakh reward, who killed over 130 police personnel and was accused of poaching and smuggling sandalwood, Veerappan was prone to slip into depression, said Amburaj. There were nights when he would rant about politicians and forest officers who did not respond to his demands to surrender.

Veerappan also allegedly sent a number of “blade-sized” tapes through messengers to media houses and politicians in Chennai. It was one such tape that brought R Gopal, editor of Tamil weekly Nakkeeran, to the jungle to interview Veerappan on video — Amburaj can be seen sitting behind Veerappan in one of them.

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Amburaj’s lawyer P P Baburaj, who is also the convenor of Mysuru-based People’s Legal Forum, said Amburaj “happened to be a criminal by fate”. “Now he realises that it was the poor socio-economic conditions in the region that thrived and supported a bandit like Veerappan. Amburaj was a victim of our system,” said Baburaj.

Amburaj is not just an actor but a fine organiser, too, said Kattimani, the founder of Sankalpa. “There were times when he acted in four different plays — that, too, classics such as Macbeth and King Lear,” said Kattimani. Girish Karnad’s Taledanda and Bhisham Sahni’s Madhavi were some of the other plays he acted in when he was a prisoner.

“Theatre and literature taught me about society, the reasons behind the phenomenon of Veerappan and my own mistakes. They made me think self-critically. I lost the most beautiful 20 years in my life. I need to recapture that, live a normal life,” said Amburaj.

First uploaded on: 31-08-2016 at 04:39 IST
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