India's mustachioed murderer "Veerappan" still roams FREE in the impotent and corrupt Brahmin-caste dominated 'state' after a 25 murder spree in sixteen years
Biggest racket in rural India these days is to declare the victim dead with help of corrupt officials and then take possession of his/her propertry
We Sikhs want no part of this sick and corrupt Indian Castocracy - Our goal is KHALISTAN
Washington, D.C., Wednesday, September 03, 2003 - India! What a country? Where a cocky little criminal, nay terrorist, Veerappan, with a distinctive two-foot (give-away) mustachio, has been openly flouting the law by murdering, smuggling and abducting prominent people for ransom for the past sixteen years (since July 1987) and the ruling Hindutva-Fundamentalist right wing Vajpayee Government of India, has not dared, or is unable, to apprehend this little cockalorum strutting in the hinterland of the Information-Technology-rich South Indian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu where American and European firms have a stake. Some country! Some government! Some criminal! Western firms better beware.Exactly a year ago, on August 28, 2002, this column, which was headlined, "India's mustachioed brigand/murderer/smuggler/kidnapperVeerappan strikes again - kidnaps an ex-minister," (www.khalistan-affairs.org/khalistancalling/2002/august28.aspx) commented on the brazen abduction for ransom of a former Karnataka Agriculture minister, one H. Nagappa, by this criminal Veerappan. We had hoped that the scornful language of our comments, along with hundreds of taunter editorials of other South Asian newspapers, would move the do-nothing Indian government (which has a two million strong armed force, nine hundred planes Airforce and an additional one and a half million paramilitary forces at its disposal) to do something to save its own face and the life of an innocent victim. Our effort was in vain. The right wing Vajpayee government, which models itself on Hitler's Genrmany - the deputy Prime minister, Mr. L. K. Advani, even wears a Hitler moustache - did NOTHING.
The victim, former minister H. Nagappa, was murdered in cold blood when relatives did not pay up. (Please read article in India's most prestigious English language newspaper, THE HINDU, dated December 09, 2002, headlined, "Tragic end to hostage crisis," at: www.hinduonnet.com/2002/12/09/stories/2002120905111100.htm and another HINDU article on the same date headlined, "Nagappa was blind-folded and shot," at: www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2002/12/10/stories/2002121005050100.htm) This was Veerappan's twenty fifth (yes 25th) cold-blooded murder since July 1987.
According to media reports last year the brigand/murderer/abductor, Veerappan, had struck exactly two years after his July 2000 abduction of the Kannada movie matinee idol, Rajkumar, when he kidnapped on August 25, 2002, the former Karnataka minister of State for Agriculture Marketing, the now murdered H. Nagappa, from the ex-minister's guarded residence in Hanur Police Station limits. According to eye witnesses, Veerappan, (who sports an eighteen inch long bushy moustache a la the 19th century devotees of the Thugee cult whose members were hunted down and hanged by the British Colonials) was accompanied by eight of his armed associates, who all 'came to the residence of the former minister at Kamagere, about 90 kilometers from Mysore, and banged at the door' in broad daylinght.
According to a Banglore datelined report in the Times of India last year, Veerappan the brigand had left an audio cassette as a momento, with the abducted ex-ministers friends before disappearing with his prey. In the audio cassette Veerappan had threatened to murder ex-minister Nagappa if the government mounted an operation against the abductor to locate him. He had also promised to deliver another cassette with his demands. To save 'face' the then Director General of Karnataka police, V. V. Bhaskar, told the Times of India newspaper, that forty platoons (30 men in each platoon) of reserve police have started combing the area. Interestingly the police/army have been combing the area since way back in July 1987 when Veerappan first kidnapped a Tamil Nadu forest officer and later lynched the man as the victim had previously interefered with the robbers sandalwood smuggling operation. The English language Times of India newspaper, in its issue of August 27, 2002, in a Coimbatore datelined report, headlined, "Events that make Veerappan notorious," tells it all: (timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?art_id=20248380)
It is unbelievable that a government of a nuclear-armed country of a billion people (which aspires to launch a moon shot by 2008, and tests missiles every other day, and wants to occupy a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, and which has bought remote-sensing thermal imaging equipment, night vision binoculars, bullet proof vests and 'improved' weaponry etc., etc., worth over two billion dollars last year) can't track down a cocky murderer who strutts around sporting a two foot long mustachio, holds crowded press conferences, leaves audio cassetts with his demands and has his photograph published in umpteen Indian newspapers. We think India's BJP Hindutva-fundamentalist rulers need to take a shot of testosterone to steel their spine so that they can face Veerappan the South Indian murderer and brigand. If they still can't catch the criminal after seventeen years then the BJP government ought to resign.
In reality it is a plain and simple case of the inability of a corrupt, shameless and unjust State, which despite its vast human and material resources, is unable or unwilling to capture an outlaw who is a serious and dangerous threat to life (25 murders in sixteen years) as well as an insult to the law and order and authority of the state. Veerappan is a terrible and demeaning symbol of a failing state which never was and never will be - India - and is an insulting question mark of the viability and longevity of the Indian State currently under fascist misrule of the Hindutva-fundamentalist BJP combine. It is obvious that there is great truth in the presciently words of that great Englishman, Sir Winston Churchil who used to say that, "India is as much a country as the Equator."
We Sikhs, a monotheistic nation of 23 million hardy souls (20 million captive in India and 3 million free in the diaspora), who cherish our freedom and egalitarianism and want to live FREE in a democratic Sikh buffer state of Khalistan - stretching from the Jumna river in the East to the Pakistan border in the West, Kashmir in the North and China on the North East - have always known that the great Mr. Winston Churchil was right when he predicted in a British parliament debate in the 1930's that the British Empire, by "handing over power to the Hindus would reduce India to the deepeest depths of Oriental tyranny and despotism".
Diaspora Sikhs better beware! Readers will not believe that the biggest corruption racket in rural India these days (and seventy percent of Indians live in villages) is to have some unfortunate declared dead with the help of corrupt officials and then occupy the victims property and farm. It takes the victim (most of them from the minorities) nearly fifty years and lots of money to clean up the legal mess if that! The Veerappan episode is another one of the examples of the corruption and the mess that is India and is symptomatic of its decline, its fall and its eventual breakup! Some democracy - India! Some freedom! Some state! We Sikhs want no part of it. We will have our buffer state of KHALISTAN in the West of the subcontinent, just like the valiant Christian Nagas will have their buffer state of Nagalim in the East.