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October20, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net]PWG WATCH: Naxals Return To Where They Came From >> |
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#1 VEERAPPAN WATCH-II: Legendary Bandit Buried In India BBC News, October 20, 2004, Wednesday Legendary bandit buried in India The funeral of India's most notorious bandit, shot dead on Monday, has taken place at a village in the southern Tamil Nadu state. Koose Muniswamy Veerappan, one of India's most wanted men, was killed along with three associates in a forest by a special police task force. Veerappan had been on the run for some 20 years. He was accused of a range of crimes, including more than 100 murders, kidnapping and smuggling. The BBC's Sunil Raman says the police decided not to bury Veerappan in his native village in the neighbouring Karnataka state fearing trouble from the large crowds that had collected there. Instead, they arranged the funeral at a public cemetery at Moolakadu village in Tamil Nadu in the presence of his wife and elder brother early on Wednesday. "We have been orphaned," wailed his wife, Muthulakshmi, who clung to her two daughters, reports say. The last rites were conducted by his brother, who is serving a life sentence and was released on parole to take part in the funeral. The BBC's Sampath Kumar, who is in Mookakadu, says a heavy security presence kept many people away. On Tuesday, thousands of people had queued up outside a hospital in Tamil Nadu's Dharmapuri district to view his body before it was taken away for the funeral. One of them, Ravi, said Veerappan helped the poor. "God will punish those policemen. Veerappan was a good man and he helped the poor," he told the BBC. Others waiting to see the bandit's body said the police should have arrested Veerappan and brought him to justice. Trap The chief ministers of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have congratulated the police for their action and announced large rewards for them. Four undercover policemen were sent to infiltrate Veerappan's gang setting into motion a chain of events that led to his killing, police have said. A trap was laid for him when he was being driven to seek medical attention. Police say they surrounded the ambulance carrying him and then opened fire when he refused to surrender. A leading human rights group has called for an inquiry into Veerappan's killing. The group, People's Watch, say the killing could have been avoided. Its head, Henry Tiphagne, asked in an interview with the BBC Tamil Service: "Why could the 100 armed police officers who surrounded Veerappan not have forced him to surrender or simply wounded him?" Tamil Nadu police say the killing of Veerappan and three associates was the result of months of planning. Veerappan had many times told journalists how he had bribed police and politicians, and had made clear he would give details if he was ever tried. Mr Tiphagne said, with Veerappan's death, the allegations of his links to leading figures in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka could not be examined. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3758456.stm ------------------------------------------------------------ Keralaonline.com, October 20, 2004, Wednesday Veerappan gets an early morning burial [India News]: Chennai, Oct 20 : Forest brigand and notorious sandalwood smuggler Veerappan was buried Wednesday morning in a Tamil Nadu village with thousands of people looking on. The burial at Moolakkadu village near Mettur in Salem district, about 100 km from where he was killed Monday night, took place at about 6 a.m. after his family performed the last rites. His elder brother Mathaiyan, serving a life term in Coimbatore jail, was given permission to attend the last rites and arrived in Mettur Tuesday night. Rights activists and lawyers from the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) had helped the family as it got into a tussle with police over whether he should be cremated or buried. Human rights activist Sukumaran was quoted as saying that they insisted on a burial so the body could be exhumed if necessary. Rights lawyers said the Special Task Force (STF) that had coordinated the operation against Veerappan - who had eluded capture for two decades and was held responsible for 120 murders - wanted to dispose of the body, but they insisted that it be handed over to the family. The activists and lawyers helped Veerappan's wife Muthulakshmi, who lives in Moolakkadu, make arrangements for the funeral and deal with the authorities. They had arrived in Dharmapuri district hospital, where the body had been kept, Tuesday evening to ensure that it was handed over to the family. With Chief Minister J. Jayalalitha Tuesday declaring emphatically that the "the state government will not support Veerappan's wife and children", activists have been worried that they might be driven to destitution. The first sign of things to come was seen Tuesday when Veerappan's 12-year-old daughter Prabha was thrown out of her school in the coastal town of Cuddalore. Officials at St Josephs Matriculation Higher Secondary School told journalists that she had been issued a transfer certificate. "It is all over. She will not be taken back," they said. A team of four lawyers, headed by advocate V. Purushothaman, had gone to the school to take Prabha to her mother and to see her father for the last time. The school said the child had waited all day for someone to pick her up. Veerappan's elder daughter Vidhyarani, a Class 10 student in a Coimbatore school, was also taken by lawyers to be with her family. --Indo-Asian News Service -------------------------------------------- #2 KERALA: SYNERGY OF FAITH IN A "TERRORIST'S" HOME Keralaonline, IANS, October 20, 2004, Wednesday Synergy of faith in a 'terrorist's' home Alappuzha , Oct 20: Secularism in all its apparent complexities finds its ultimate definition here -- in the home of a man shot down in Gujarat for being a terrorist whose father is a devout Hindu but eight-year-old son is a practising Muslim. The two religions coexist comfortably in the home of Pranesh Kumar, alias Javed Ghulam Sheikh, who was killed in a shootout by Indian security forces in Ahmedabad on June 15 this year with three other suspected militants. Kumar's father Gopinathan Pillai, 66, is a Hindu. His grandson Siddiq Abubacker continues to be a staunch Muslim even after his father's death, offering namaz five times a day. Siddiq came to live with his grandparents after Javed's killing and enrolled himself at the Sabari Central School at Noorandu village in Class 2. "The decision was Siddiq's. He often accompanied us to temples and one day I asked him whether he wanted to lead a life of a Muslim or a Hindu. The answer was quick. He said he wants to call Allah - and we did not have any problem," Pillai told IANS. Pillai knows it would not have been difficult to convince the youngster but saw no reason to do so. "Believe me, if I had said he should become a Hindu, it would have been simple. But I felt that it would be a sin on my part to corrupt a young mind. I decided to provide him all the support he needed as long as I am alive," the fond grandfather and grieving father went on to say. So, in a perfect synergy of faith and familial love, Pillai accompanies his grandson to the local mosque. While Siddiq goes inside, Pillai waits outside for him to finish saying his prayers. And when Pillai and his wife visit the temple, Siddiq also goes along. In this month of Ramadan, when Muslims all over the world are fasting, Pillai would like to get up in the morning and prepare food for the child but is unable to do so because both he and his wife are ailing. As for the eight-year-old, who lost his father so suddenly, he says he has no problems being a Muslim in a Hindu family. Speaking with the maturity of one much older, he said, "Even though I like Hindu gods, my first choice is Allah. Every day I pray to Allah five times sitting in my room and I have no problem in my school." Siddiq, who has picked up Malayalam in the three months that he has been with his grandparents, is now looking forward to meeting his mother Sajida who is in Pune and will soon be coming to her husband's home. "I can speak Hindi, English and Malayalam and now I am waiting to see my mother," he said. Pillai added simply about his daughter-in-law: "She is ours too." In an increasingly polarised world, Pillai and his wife are a beacon of hope. http://www.asianetindia.com/keralanews.asp?folder=Keralanews&file=7_4501.xml ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CHRO |
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| << October19, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net]EXCERPT OF BOOK BY Y P SINGH "VULTURES IN LOVE |
October20, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net]PWG WATCH: Naxals Return To Where They Came From >> |
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