Interview with Walter Dawaram

It’s the mustache that does it. It distracts and takes away the attention, bringing

to sharp recall a similarly luxuriant spread on another more famous face. A face

you know to be that of a poacher, a smuggler and a killer, still at large in the

forests of Sathyamangalam. A scrawny, dark-skinned man, often shown to be

shouldering a rifle, living out a life that is fast becoming a legend. If albeit of

dubious proportions.

But the face that bears this mustache is not his, it belongs to the man who has

sworn to become his nemesis. A man whose name hangs nebulously in the

battle-scared unsacred history of policedom, a man with a colourful past and an

unfathomable code of ethics.

In these chequered times, being a cop is perhaps the hardest of all in Tamilnadu.

But Walter Dawaram, ex-DGP and the man who has several times in the recent

past said that he would go “all out” to catch the brigand called Veerappan, is

unfazed. The little tubelit room that barely holds a table and three chairs in the

Nellai Friends Club where he sits, is comfortably air conditioned, insulated from

the blazing heat of the Tamilnadu scorcher of a summer. Dawaram is preparing

to go after Veerappan, re-constituting a demoralised Special Task Force(STF)

in what could well be the encounter he had waited all his life for.

“I have immersed myself in sports after retirement,” he says calmly as he poses

for the pictures, “I have been the Vice President of the Indian Athletic

Association.” We see the first glimmers of a smile. The smile becomes wider as

he tells me, “You are perhaps the last journalist I will be giving an interview to

before I go after Veerappan.” He goes on to talk of the perils of talking to

vernacular papers and the pitfalls of being misquoted time and again.

He should know. A man who made news in his time, not just for his exploits as

a policeman, but in his relationships too, Dawaram has seen it all. The final

straw perhaps, was the Austalian Coralie Younger who went to press talking

about her relationship with the cop, and her twin children, who she said, were

fathered by him. From Dawaram’s side, there was silence. He weathered the

storm as the sensational news sizzled into silence.

He also does know of the ignominy of not being taken seriously. Like for

instance, when he offered to catch Veerappan five years ago. And when actor

Rajkumar was kidnapped. “There were no real efforts to catch the brigand,” he

says, “It was an operation that petered out. From 1993 May to December

1994, the STF under me, had many encounters with Veerappan and we

reduced the gang to five. Then when the government changed, I was transferred

as DG Training.”

After that, says Dawaram, repeated requests on his part to catch the brigand,

were refused by the new government. “They thought he would surrender,” he

says, “Or they had a soft spot for him. The STF was allowed to detereorate.”

The subject touches a sore spot as he goes on to recount how the government

talked of offering amnesty to the brigand. That’s when Dawaram filed an

affidavit at the Supreme Court asking that the brigand face trial. “I had lost ten

men under me, while killing 58,” he says, “And about twenty others were

injured. I have a responsibility for the dead. He can’t be allowed to go scot

free.”

The zing is back and the man is raring to go. “I am thrilled at having been asked

to head the STF,” he says, “I have asked for volunteers to join the STF. All you

need is guts, stamina and a willingness to rough it out. You have to live off the

forest all through.” And he is prepared to head them in his usual `go-get-em’

style. “I will be with my men all through, that’s how I have always been.”

As he talks once more about the inaction of the past five years, you realise that

for Dawaram, Veerappan is the itch, the sore, that has refused to go away. “In

the last five years,” he says, “There’s been no encounters, death on his side, no

casuality on ours.” The Veerappan itch remains, and to his chagrin, seems to

have grown back in strength again. “The worst thing is,” he states, “is allowing

extremist organisations to join him. He then became strong enough to kidnap

Rajkumar.”

“The day Rajkumar was released, if they had entered the forest, they would

have nabbed him in twelve hours.”

“We are back to square one now.”

The squares stretch long and far. Black, white and gray.

“It will be an all out operation.”

Ominous. Will he deliver?

Huh, scoff the disbelievers. Nobody wants to catch Veerappan. Not one

politician. It’s all a scam.

“It’s not a Mahabharatha or a Ramayana of a battle. It does not need any

techniques of strategies. It’s just a simple operation.”

Huh, scoff the disbelievers. Bet you fifty bucks Veerappan will never face the

music.

“Veerappan is a brigand. A smuggler and a poacher. Now he’s become a

`Tamil champion’ thanks to all those extremist outfits who have been in touch

with him. But he’s killed more Tamilians than Kannadigas.”

Walter Dawaram has been given a year to catch Veerappan.

“If he surrenders or if we can disarm him, we can catch him alive. Otherwise,

we have every right to shoot him.”

The thick canopy of the Sathyamangalam forests hide the brigand and his tribe.

They also hide a good many secrets. If only we knew….

Sandhya Sridhar