December 8. A few hours after Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa got the news of former Karnataka minister Hanur Nagappa's murder, she received a call she had been anticipating. It was from her Karnataka counterpart S.M. Krishna asking her to renew the joint operations of the Special Task Force to pin down forest brigand Veerappan who had kidnapped Nagappa. Jayalalithaa immediately ordered "an effective and conclusive joint operation." Sadly, the synergy-which should have gone into saving Nagappa but eluded the two state governments for 106 days of the kidnap crisis-was facilitated only after the recovery of his decomposed body.

HUNTER AND THE HUNTED After the recovery of Nagappa's body (right) the joint STF has begun its search for Veerappan

VEERAPPAN'S 122ND VICTIM? Hanur Nagappa, a minister in the J.H. Patel government, was kidnapped by Veerappan from his farmhouse at Kamagere in Kollegal near Mysore on August 26. The decomposed body of the 67-year-old was found with a bullet injury in Chengadi forests near Kamagere on December 8, 106 days after the abduction.

Who killed the 67-year-old businessman-turned-politician? "The Centre's apathy as well as the inefficiency of the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka police whose job was to hunt down Veerappan and rescue Nagappa," says a close friend of Nagappa's family. Veerappan struck even as a 2,000 personnel-strong STF-set up in 1990 to catch him-claimed it had been scouring his habitat, an 18,000 sq km area covering five districts in Karnataka and four in Tamil Nadu (see map).

Two years ago, Veerappan had cocked a snook at the STF by kidnapping Kannada filmstar Rajkumar and holding him in custody for 108 days. Former Karnataka police chief C. Dinakar alleges in a controversial book that Rajkumar was released only after Krishna paid Rs 20 crore to Veerappan. After Nagappa's kidnapping on August 25, questions arose on why the former minister was targeted. While one theory had it that Veerappan spirited him away to bargain for the release of some of his sympathisers in jail, another one doing the rounds was that Veerappan wanted to settle scores with Nagappa for snipping away at his smuggling operations when he was a minister in J.H. Patel's government.

For more than a decade and half, Veerappan's operations have been in a hilly, forested terrain. But he knows every path and is a meticulous planner. Police believe that the Veerappan gang could have camped in Kamagere near Mysore for more than three weeks to do its home work before abducting Nagappa while the STF, on which the Government has spent more than Rs 60 crore since 1990, just sat by. Well-placed police sources said the gang even entered Nagappa's residence compound and felled two sandal trees to gauge the reaction. There was no response either from the security men or the Nagappa household. And when Nagappa was held to ransom, Veerappan forced both the state governments on the backfoot.

JAYALALITHAA-KRISHNA FACE-OFF

The Cauvery crisis soured relations between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and joint STF operations suffered.

Karnataka decided to negotiate with Veerappan but Tamil Nadu refused to call off operations.

Jayalalithaa did not approve of Mani as emissary to negotiate with Veerappan.

On September 6, the Centre had got into the act. A special Indian Air Force IL-76 with 140 National Security Guards (NSG) commandos left Delhi for Bangalore. Equipped with hi-tech MP-5 sub-machine guns, night-vision devices and other gadgets, the Black Cat commandos headed for Kollegal. The team had weapons like the Uzi, Hekler and Koch and 9-mm pistols of the Sag Sauer P-226 variety. All this to combat Veerappan's rifles and magazines seized from the Karnataka police, country-made pipe grenades and a sizeable quantity of explosives scrounged from granite quarries. It was to be a secret and clinical operation. In the end it turned out to be neither. All it took was a week for the crack team to realise they were up against the impossible. The team packed its bags and left.

The NSG fiasco was only to be expected. Says Major-General S. Vombatkere (retd): "Outfits like the NSG which are roped in for a specific operation need to be given time to familiarise themselves with the area. Their operation can work only if good intelligence is provided by the local personnel who are familiar with the terrain." The key lies with the STF.

The STF, however, swings into action only when Veerappan strikes. Otherwise its men are back in their barracks by nightfall which is when the outlaw begins his prowl. The STF officials claim their men move in the jungles for days at a stretch for long combing operations. But if that were so, the STF camp at Gundal, a short distance from where Nagappa was kidnapped, should have got wind of the brigand's daring act. Or they could have at least established a reasonably good "intelligence network" with the help of the locals to ferret out details of the bandit's movement. They could do neither. The local police knew about the abduction within five minutes, but weaned on bureaucratic red tape, they did not act and waited for orders from higher up. Meanwhile with Nagappa as the hostage, Veerappan and his gang trekked for around 6 km and hijacked a bus to reach the Satyamangalam forests.

BLOODY PATH

Veerappan and his gang are considered responsible for the murder of 121 people.

Used guerrilla strategy and went for selective killing of police and forest officials.

Poached over 2,000 elephants and smuggled sandalwood worth Rs 400 crore in 30-odd years.

256 villages on Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border are his area of operation.

In such an unfriendly situation, Nagappa really had no chance. The sloppiness of the police was compounded by the one-upmanship by Karnataka and Tamil Nadu governments. The STF chief of one state blamed the other, saying Veerappan was operating in the latter's territory. To complicate matters, the two chief ministers had barely been on talking terms after the Cauvery crisis broke out in July. Krishna did speak to Jayalalithaa when Nagappa was abducted; they spoke again after his body was found. And in between the Centre did nothing to take charge and shake up the lethargic STF.

The lack of understanding and cooperation between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka has been obvious for a long time. Unlike during the Rajkumar case, when the states agreed to send emissaries into the forest, this time Tamil Nadu stuck unrelentingly to an aggressive stand. On August 28, Jayalalithaa ordered, "We want Veerappan dead or alive."

On August 30, Karnataka decided to negotiate with Veerappan but Tamil Nadu refused to budge from its belligerent posture. The wedge being driven deep between the state governments must have made Veerappan happy. And it is only natural for Veerappan to attribute Nagappa's death to an "encounter" with the Tamil Nadu STF for it was the one which continued with the combing operations even after Karnataka suspended operations on September 12.

When Veerappan wanted incarcerated Tamil activist Kolathur Mani as the emissary, Karnataka had no option but to let Mani out on bail. When all but one of the courts granted bail to Mani, the prospects of a negotiated settlement looked bright. Jayalalithaa then put a spanner in the works by saying that Mani would be arrested if he stepped into Tamil Nadu territory. As the impasse continued the crisis came to a bloody end.

But the blame game did not end. Jayalalithaa's immediate reaction to the Nagappa murder was, "It was at the instance of the Government of Karnataka that the joint operations of the STF was discontinued. After that, Tamil Nadu had no role to play on the Karnataka side of the forests since Veerappan continues to be located on the Karnataka territory." In effect, she was saying that the Tamil Nadu STF has nothing to do with the alleged encounter in which Nagappa was killed. But on December 11, a search party of the Karnataka STF found 27 spent bullets of an AK-47 rifle (which Veerappan is not believed to possess) about 300 to 500 yards from where Nagappa's body was found. Was there an encounter then? The post-mortem said Nagappa died of a single bullet injury. But with the authorities claiming that the bullet could not be recovered, the primary question remains unanswered: who killed Nagappa?

Now both the chief ministers vow to go after Veerappan with all their might but the STF does not seem to have learnt from its mistakes. There were allegations that they did not storm the forests immediately after the release of Rajkumar. This time too it was no different. Even 24 hours after the confirmation of Nagappa's murder, the joint operations had not begun. The Tamil Nadu STF said they were waiting for its Karnataka counterpart to join them. The Centre had promised "all the help" but nothing was either sought nor given in the crucial hours.

Things began to move last week as STF's Satyamangalam camp showed signs of cooperation from the state governments-Security Adviser to Karnataka L. Srinivasulu, STF Joint Commandant W.I. Dawaram and Tamil Nadu STF chief R. Nataraj started discussing logistics and planning. A little too late perhaps. Given Veerappan's knowledge of the terrain, the delay must have given him enough time to shift base to somewhere the STF can only wildly guess at.