These photos throw light on the kind of life Veerapan leads in his forest hideout...»
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He pointedly made a display of his brutality. When he caught a police informer, he hacked her head and hanged it from a pole in the village centre. He called members of a rival gang on the pretext of making peace, got them drunk and shot them.

He also showed ingenuity in recovering his money from a cattle grazer who had stumbled upon a bagful of cash buried in the jungle. He dispatched his men to look for any villager who was spending beyond his means, and before long, had the man located and abducted. He recovered the money but let the poor man go unharmed.

During a raid, the police found several Tamil newspapers from a hideout he had abandoned. An illiterate Veerappan was learning to read.

When foresters stepped up vigilance, he quit poaching and took to sandalwood smuggling. He made a lot of money through the trade.

He used guile and intelligence to evade forest officials. Deputy Conservator of Forests Srinivasan worked on a Gandhian principle and weaned many of his supporters. Driven to a comer and left with a handful of men, he invited Srinivasan to come alone and unarmed into the forest to discuss the terms of surrender. He shot dead Srinivasan, half-burnt his body, crushed the fingers and took away the head as a trophy.

He also killed Special Task Force (STF) chief T Harikrishana through guile. In another planned attack, he mined a road to trap a convoy of STF personnel. The blast killed many STF personnel and maimed its new chief “Rambo” Gopalakrishnan. The Rambo had boasted of capturing him in 20 days.

Every time the authorities killed his men, Veerappan struck back with vengeance. Since sandalwood smuggling was becoming difficult, he took to abducting quarry owners, both for money and for the explosives they used.

Analysis: He is a weak man psychologically. To cover his weakness, he turns up his moustache. His barbarity also points to his weakness; it is an expression of fear that gang members might construe illing alone as a sign of meekness. The protagonist, however, releases the poor cattle grazer because he is barbaric only to those who are a danger to him. His attempts to read and write also point to the tendencies of a psychopath. Like all psychopaths, he wants to learn what others think of his exploits. He also derives pleasure from reading about himself. His superior IQ also tells him that reading will help chalk out plans in advance...more »