Godfearing Godfather?

Four years ago, the editor of a Tamil journal called Nakkheeran sent a reporter with a videocamera into the forests to find notorious smuggler Veerappan. The story that he brought back was more than a scoop-it turned into a full biography of a poor peasant who began as a small-time poacher and grew into the nation's most wanted smuggler, ruling over the 6,000 sq km-forest between Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala for decades despite the efforts of the combined police forces of two state governments, a special task force and the army.

Veerappan began life in a small village, Shangapadi, on the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border, the eldest son of a poor peasant with five acres of land. As a boy, he took the villagers' cattle to graze in the surrounding forest. Veerappan's father supplemented his family's income by hunting, accompanied by his eager son. By the time Veerappan was 14, he knew how to handle a gun and was also the area's best hunter. A distant relative introduced him to the ivory trade: by the age of 20, Veerappan was the richest and most influential man in his village. His involvement in a village feud led to him killing two men of a rival faction. Since then, barring a brief interval when he was captured while on a gun-buying spree in Bangalore, Veerappan has ruled over that forest, killing over 200 elephants and 138 men, including 32 policemen.

But the man who emerges from this biography is a sentimental, shrewd, god-fearing godfather, who wakes up at 5 am to pray over his weapons and doles out money and vengeance to villagers. He is convinced that he is invincible, that his destiny is to become prime minister and destroy evil men such as police and forest officers who kill innocent villagers in "encounters," steal their goats and rape their women.