We have a primal fascination for anti-heroes. History is replete with stories about charismatic leaders who operate outside of the law, challenge societal conventions, and take what they want with violence and brute force. Stories about such personalities are often entrenched in moral ambivalence and so it goes with Veerappan. Was he a terrorist or a revolutionary? Was he a brigand or a champion of the oppressed? Was he good or evil? Netflix’s The Hunt for Veerappan is neither a character study of the infamous brigand, nor does it delve too deeply into the socio-economic factors that gave rise to such a man, or sheds light on why he was seen as a Robin Hood-esque figure by some. The docu-series stays true to the title and trains its focus on the progressive expansion of Veerappan’s capacity to unleash chaos and destruction, the imminent need to contain what would soon become a matter of national security, the many foibles of the armed forces during the decades-long manhunt, and how they eventually managed to succeed.
Director: Selvamani Selvaraj
Streaming on Netflix
The four-part series is dominated by the perspectives of the Karnataka Police, investigative journalist Sunaad, and Veerappan’s wife Muthulakshmi. The film seamlessly blends in the abundant news footage and pictures (some released by Veerappan himself) along with the events being narrated. Veerappan’s audio messages, his sharp-tongued remarks against the police, add an eerie sense of depth to the narrative.
Initially, the narrative falters in registering the expansive geography within which the story unfolds. We don’t get a sense of location as the people involved in the manhunt narrate crossing highly sensitive TN-Karnataka forest borders, trekking through dense valleys, and travelling between the villages. The narrative further suffers from anachronistic errors such as Sunaad’s remark about the Rajkumar kidnapping, where he says, “To think such a man (Rajkumar) was a hapless, helpless victim of a diabolical Tamil-speaking brigand like Veerappan was simply unacceptable to every single person in Karnataka.” The need to invoke Veerappan’s Tamil identity at that moment could probably be attributed to the fact that the kidnapping was happening around the height of tensions between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka due to the Cauvery dispute. However, the Cauvery issue and its relevance to the story are only expounded after Sunaad’s remark.
While Veerappan was evidently not a sympathetic character, it is revealed in passing that some villagers did look at him as their guardian angel. And while certain police officers did enforce brutal intimidation tactics, there were also Forest Officers like K Srinivas who helped the locals and was in turn looked at by them as one of their own. However, while we listen to emphatic accounts from the villagers of how Srinivas helped them, the point about how a part of the locals looked at Veerappan as their saviour is not substantiated by interviews.
To its credit, the docu-series lays out every botched strategy and the subsequent failures of the Special Task Force (STF). Officers like Tiger Ashok Kumar are questioned about the brutal methods enforced by the STF. While the early failures of the STF are elaborated in detail over the course of three episodes, the ingenious strategies of the STF under Tamil Nadu IPS Vijay Kumar, which put an end to the Veerappan problem, seem to be rushed through in the final episode. Interviews of key figures like Nakkeeran Gopal (who acted as the emissary between Veerappan and the State Governments) and IPS Vijay Kumar were noticeably absent.
The Hunt for Veerappan is a competent summation of one of the most dramatic ascensions of a common criminal to that of a national threat. The story of Veerappan is intrinsically engaging, with moments befitting an over-the-top film. While the Netflix docu-series might not be an incisive peek into the subject matter, it nevertheless tries its best to be unbiased, objective, and lays out almost every fact connected to the story and weaves them together in a cohesive manner. Perhaps, the one point of the entire story, that lingers with you long after the credits roll, is the thought that a Veerappan should not be repeated.
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