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Operation Moles and Infiltration
 ADGP Vijaykumar, in this the third part of the exclusive interview to chennaionline, talks about the strategy to nab bandit Veerappan through Operation Mole and Infiltration in which SP Senthamarai Kannan and his team played the most crucial role.
"In fact, no praise can be too high for Senthamarai Kannan, (now DIG). He was the most crucial aspect of the operation against Veerappan. We decided on infiltrating into Veerappan's camp. However, one problem was the failure of past strategies to have some men from the police force infiltrating into Veerappan's organisation. Veerappan was knwon to have eliminated many persons who tried to infiltrate into his
organisation".
This time, the strategy was to break Veerappan from within. The idea was to try and convert some of Veerappan's own men into Moles.
The problem was Veerappan had reduced his public appearances. In the nineties, he would visit some villages, merely to terrorise them, and warn them against assisting the police or indulge in some reprisal killings. After 2000, he changed his modus operandi. Me might have been visiting some villages by donning a disguise but the number of times one could see him were few.
Vijakumar pointed out, "In fact, the story doing the rounds in the forests and in the nearby towns and even among the police force was that Veerappan would appear only once in a year. No one knew where, how or why, but that was the only chance to get him. This was the general
belief.
 Unfortunately, for me, it so happened that before I took over, Veerappan was said to have visited Kathiripatti village near Mettur. The information reached the STF too late and by the time they tried to reach there, Veerappan had just left the place. Having missed him then, there was a general belief that it may take at least another year to get a crack at Veerappan. By the law of averages, we believed we had a long wait ahead of us".
"Quite often in the forests, a lot of information would come to us but most of it would result in a wild goose chase as there would ultimately be no sign of Veerappan or his men".
"With the prospect of a long wait, we decided to focus on the job of infiltrating his organisation. This was one of the many strategies adopted to get at his gang, some of which cannot be revealed even at this stage. There were basically two strategies to infiltrate -- the first was to try and get some men to join his organisation and hope that they will gain Veerappan's confidence and that they would maintain a supply of information, ultimately leading to his capture. However, this did not really work as Veerappan was extremely suspicious about strangers and there were many cases of Veerappan killing some of our men or killing those whom he suspected to be informants".
"The second strategy was of winning over some of his men by various means. Senthamarai Kannan and his team had been working on several persons with the idea of converting them into "moles" who would leak information about Veerappan, the gang, their movements and plans to us. This was a delicate and sensitive operation, where we had to take great care to protect the 'moles' and not be in a hurry so as not to expose them or alert Veerappan. We finally succeeded in getting one "mole" who was, in fact, close to Veerappan. Money played a big role here. This mole, in turn, helped us secure more moles. Gradually, we had a network within Veerappan's gang, and they were all Veerappan's men. That was the beauty of the operation".
Senthamarai Kannan also had deployed many men from the police force in various capacities in the forests and in adjoining towns, Vijaykumar pointed out. These men not only relayed information on a regular basis to the STF command but also gained the confidence of the local people and ultimately helped move close to Veerappan's epicentre.
 "We can now divulge that one of Senthamarai Kannan's men acted as a priest for a long period, while one performed duties as a bus conductor. Senthamarai himself could pass off as a constable and go directly into the field", said Vijaykumar. Senthamarai would unobstrusively go into the villages and gather information too. Many of the men lived in villages or towns, taking up roles as merchants or traders or some other occupation, to merge with the local population.
The STF chief would normally, in any operation, like to lead from the front. In this case, he could not enter the infiltration phase as he was well known in the area having served in both Salem and Dharmapuri districts. Therefore, the role of Senthamarai Kannan in handling the infiltration process directly was extremely crucial to the operation.
(To be continued)
R Rangaraj
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