Manish already posted about the assassination of notorious bandit Veerappan, but I thought I’d follow up by telling SM readers about this article from the BBC, which discusses how a “leading” South Indian human rights group is unhappy with the tactics employed in exterminating the dacoit.
…the killing could have been avoided, according to the human rights group, People’s Watch.
Its head, Henry Tiphagne, asked in an interview with the BBC Tamil Service: “Why could the 100 armed police officers who surrounded Veerappan not have forced him to surrender or simply wounded him?”
Veerappan had many times told journalists how he had bribed police and politicians, and had made clear he would give details if he was ever tried.
Mr Tiphagne said, with Veerappan’s death, the allegations of his links to leading figures in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka could not be examined.
After gazing at that picture, what I want to know is, what happened to his meesha (moustache)? Am I looking at an insult added to (final) injury?
I wonder what kind of T-shirts they made up?
I think that’s a fair critique to offer — the fact that they didn’t capture him alive, even though they had him surrounded, makes one wonder if they ever intended to.
Veerappan was connected to the LTTE, as were many prominent politicians. He may have had the goods on some of them. (It’s probably part of how he managed to elude capture for so long)
Take a look at the ambulance in the photo, it’s riddled with bullets. It’s consistent with an assasination, and a bit harder to square with their account — after all, the guy was so ill he had to go to a hospital, they could have just waited until he ran out of ammo and captured him rather than 100 officers all shooting at the ambulance from all directions.
But it’s hard to tell and it could well be as the police described.
“But it’s hard to tell and it could well be as the police described”
Your analysis is correct. This is pretty common for police in India to do. Plenty of times they will just go ahead and kill someone in an ‘encounter’. Many reasons though. When I was still in India, there was a similar case where a well known ‘Gunda’ was caught. But the guy had plenty of connections to get him out of jail/around the judiciary.
Rumor was that the police let the guy go and then shot him to make it look like he was running away. Not that the dude didn’t deserve it, but the accusation of vigilante style justice has a strong basis.
Another reason could be that since the Govt. spent millions of dollars to track him down, the guy killed police officers and a minister, everyone was simply seeing red.