End to India's brutal 'Robin Hood'

Just outside this country's version of Sherwood Forest, they're not exactly sure what to make of Robin Hood's death.

"They killed him? Oh, my God, I must check the papers," cafe owner Shuresh says upon hearing the news, before running from his storefront to a nearby newsstand.

Five minutes later he returned with a bemused expression, his friend Balusubramaniaum ("call me Balu"), and a copy of an English-language daily newspaper with a banner headline: "Veerappan shot dead."

"It has finally happened," Balu sighs. But it's hard to tell if the breath he heaved was one of relief or sadness.

Maybe it's just amazement, because after decades and a $218 million manhunt, India's most notorious outlaw, a man who eluded authorities for years by hiding among villagers who depended on his handouts, finally met his end 250 miles from here in a police sting on Oct. 18.

Most locals concede the saga of Koose Muniswamy Veerappan, better known as just Veerappan or the "the Jungle Cat," was more like notorious Australian outlaw Ned Kelly than Robin Hood - more a tale of a cold-blooded killer than a man of the masses. But many of the same Indians insist one of the world's largest ivory and sandalwood smugglers avoided capture for so long because he could rely, like his antihero predecessors, on the sympathies of people who rarely count on their own government.

"He was helping those guys in those villages because they had no other way of earning money. What can they do, but chop some trees and make some money? The people in the towns, they may not have had many ideas on Veerappan one way or the other. But the adivasis liked him," says Jottisavavanao, a local businessman.

Adivasis are the tribal populace of India. Many are marginalized hunter-gatherers or dirt-poor agriculturalists who rely on government-issued education or employment certificates, which guarantee jobs with public employers and slots in state schools.

In towns like Dharmapuri, where Veerappan was ambushed by police while sitting in an ambulance driven by an undercover policeman, adivasi livelihood was largely dependent on the whims of outlaws like Veerappan or mid-level Indian bureaucrats who control the distribution of certificates. Many adivasis opt for the outlaws.

"There are very few people who try to understand the adivasis, and there are very few options for an adivasi without a certificate," said Dr. V. Sudarsen, head of the anthropology department at the University of Madras. He points to the 2001 census when thousands of Indians tried to claim adivasi descent and gain certificates. The government's response: cut back certificates - even for bonafide tribals, who were forced to fall back on eking out a sustenance level of living.

In a land where the law is often viewed as incompetent, the lawless become the heroes, especially to those who are oppressed the most. It was Veerappan's ability to sympathize with the plight of poor villagers, coupled with his habit of bucking a government many blamed for their poverty, which kept him a folk hero in many south Indian circles.

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