Forest brigand Veerappan could identify the personnel of Tamil Nadu STF hunting for him simply by listening to their voices and the force had to come up with a 'no-word-only-number' solution to foil his attempts.
Forest brigand Veerappan could identify the personnel of Tamil Nadu STF hunting for him simply by listening to their voices and the force had to come up with a 'no-word-only-number' solution to foil his attempts.
This and several other interesting details of techniques adopted during the operation by the Tamil Nadu Special Task Force (STF), which planned and executed his killing, and also about the bandit find mention in a new book.
"Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand" by K Vijay Kumar, the man who spearheaded Operation Cocoon, describes in detail the ruthless killings and high-profile kidnappings masterminded by Veerappan, including the 108-day ordeal involving Kannada superstar Rajkumar.
Published by Rupa, the book relives the various incidents that shaped Veerappan's life - from his birth in Gopinatham in 1952 to his death in 2004 in the shootout in Padi.
"Veerappan had a very cost-effective 'I-Com' wireless set - similar to the equipment employed by the LTTE, among others - that allowed him to tune into the STF's communications," says Kumar.
"His gang members had revealed in many a debriefing post-surrender that he could identify our personnel simply by listening to their voices. He particularly enjoyed the very chaste Tamil spoken by (Inspector) Karuppusamy. The bandit had apparently laughed heartily when an SP of the STF was nearly washed away in a flash flood," he writes.
But now Veerappan was flummoxed to hear only numbers and no words after the STF came up with a simple solution to counter his listening in.
"The over 60-sq-km that fell within these 16 squares were divided into smaller squares. Then we superimposed an imaginary clock on the overall square for easy reference. We used clock positions to refer to our locations, which were easily understood by our teams, but not by others listening in.
"At a loss to understand the barrage of numbers, Veerappan now had to constantly worry about the direction of a possible attack by the STF. To add to his misery, the teams would sometimes deliberately lapse back into Tamil and pretend to have spotted his couriers, even when they hadn t. Veerappan was always on the edge. After all, we were messing with his mind," writes Kumar. (MORE)
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
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