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THE NATION:
RAJKUMAR'S RELEASE
"It
is like a rebirth"
Rajkumar
is free, his fans are ecstatic but in the melee, the issue of Veerappan
is forgotten.
By
Vaasanthi and Stephen David
In
the end it was a bit of deception and his famed acting that did the trick.
It was a still and hot afternoon inside the forest near Erode in Tamil
Nadu. Rajkumar was sleeping when he was woken up by three of the gang
members of Koose Muniswamy Veerappan, his dreaded captor. Immediately,
the Kannada actor sensed that P. Nedumaran, leader of a fringe Tamil nationalist
group, and his associates were back, yet another time, to try and set
him free. He had been expecting them. He could hear the familiar voice
of Nedumaran from where Veerappan sat with the rest of his men.
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| A Beaming
Rajkumar |
But then
his ears picked up another voice, that of a woman. "A few moments
later I was completely flabbergasted to see a young woman walk up to me,
stethoscope in hand, saying she was a doctor and wanted to examine me,"
he recalls. It was all a ruse. She was Bhanu, a quarry owner and doctor
from Bangalore, that Nedumaran had got along. She whispered to Rajkumar
in Kannada that he should put up an act of being unwell. "I got into
the role and started acting quite sick. I even told Bhanu that my heart
was giving me trouble when Veerappan was close enough to hear us."
Bhanu checked Rajkumar's pulse and said it was "very low", looking
pointedly at Veerappan.
Today, safe
and back at home, Rajkumar is convinced that it was Nedumaran's sustained
negotiations with the bandit, coupled with his and Bhanu's playacting,
that resulted in his release. And it didn't come a day too early. Talking
to a sea of press reporters in Bangalore last week, the actor turned emotional
saying very often he would get quite depressed in the jungle. "I
can't believe that I am sitting here in front of you. It's like a new
universe. I still wonder how I spent so many days in the jungle. No sunshine.
No people. Only elephants sometimes." Rajkumar also said he was surprised
that the press had got wind of his release so soon. "You were not
supposed to know till today (November 16)." The idea being that Veerappan
and his men would get enough time to shift their camp elsewhere in the
forests.
No One's
Talking About the Deal: The actor and his family were however completely
silent on the "deal" that Nedumaran and his other associates
had brokered with Veerappan for the release. In fact, speaking to India
Today, one of the negotiators in Nedumaran's team, K. Sukumaran, Chennai-based
secretary of the People's Union for Civil Liberties in Pondicherry, categorically
said, "No money changed hands for his release." Sukumaran said
his team did some plain talking with the bandit, convincing him that after
the Supreme Court ruling, there was no hope of getting the TADA detenus
released-one of Veerappan's main demands. The negotiators also stressed
that the longer Veerappan held Rajkumar, the more tension there would
be between Tamils and Kannadigas. "He seemed to understand our point."
However,
there are not many takers for this unconditional release theory. A lot
of people reason that Veerappan would not have gone through all this trouble
to get nothing in the end. Also, there are indications that the deal was
sealed even before Nedumaran left for the forests this time. In fact,
some sources close to Nedumaran say he had extracted two main assurances
from the Government. Firstly, that the state would handsomely compensate
Tamil families which lost property and life in the 1991 riots over the
Cauvery water dispute. And two, an assurance that Veerappan would not
be hunted by the Special Task Force once Rajkumar was released-a promise
that state governments need not necessarily keep.
But deal
or no deal, there was widespread jubilation in Karnataka once news spread
that Rajkumar had been released. People spilled out on to the streets,
burst crackers and distributed sweets. An army of Rajkumar fans, who had
ringed the actor's palatial house in Sadashivanagar and refused to leave
until he spoke to them. Addressing them from his roof, he thanked them
saying, "My fans are like my gods." Below his family had gathered,
relief written on their faces. Says Shivrajkumar, the eldest son: "The
nightmare is over." Male members of the family, all of whom till
yesterday were sporting beards, having vowed they wouldn't shave it off
until Rajkumar returned, stood clean-shaven and beaming.
But more
than them, it was Karnataka Chief Minister S.M. Krishna's day to gloat.
His gesture of sending two helicopters to Erode, where Rajkumar spent
his first night out of captivity, to bring the actor and his family back
to Bangalore went down well with the crowds. Even 76-year-old Abdul Kareem,
father of inspector Shakeel Ahmed whom Veerappan had killed and on whose
petition the Supreme Court stayed the release of the tada detenus, said
he was happy to see Rajkumar back home. "I have always said there
was no point in swapping the detenus for Rajkumar."
Still, in
all this happiness, Rajkumar remembered some of the bad moments. Like
the negotiations that failed. "R. Gopal-editor of the Tamil weekly
Nakkeeran-came several times but nothing seemed to come out of it. But
the moment Nedumaran stepped in, there was a visible difference. In fact
Veerappan himself asked for Nedumaran." Rajkumar also said the worst
part of the ordeal came when fellow abductee Nagappa, a relative of Rajkumar,
escaped. "I thought that we would all get shot." Veerappan was
quite angry and his men tied up Rajkumar, Govindraj and Nagesh, the other
two captives. "I pleaded with them to let Govindraj and Nagesh go.
I said, 'Take my life, I have lived it to the full'." Fortunately,
Veerappan relented and said nothing would happen to them.
So what
happens now? Experts say Karnataka might go in for an operation against
the bandit, especially as the Supreme Court has come down hard on it and
the Centre is trying to thrash out a common plan to deal with terrorist
activities. But the fact remains that though Rajkumar is free, so is Veerappan-out
there in the forests, possibly richer, and as usual laughing last.
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The
Indian industry has increased its decibel level of whining. Instead, it
should get the government to deliver, says INDIA TODAY Associate Editor
V. Shankar Aiyar in 
