Forest brigand Veerappan died in an “encounter” in 2004, but the mystery surrounding the killing of one of his kidnap victims, former Karnataka minister H Nagappa, has just been given a fresh lease of life by the state government. The Cabinet has decided to fulfill a long-standing request of Nagappa’s family and a commission of inquiry’s recommendation to hand over investigations to the CBI.

The former minister, kidnapped from his farmhouse near the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu border on August 25, 2002 by the Veerappan gang, was found dead on the Karnataka side of the border forests on December 8, 2002. The post-mortem and investigations by ballistic experts suggested that a single bullet from an AK-47 killed the former minister.

Veerappan had in tapes sent out following the Nagappa killing accused the Special Task Forces of the two states of killing the minister during a failed rescue operation. The Karnataka government headed by S M Krishna and the Tamil Nadu government headed by J Jayalalithaa had indicated that the brigand had killed Nagappa.

A forensic study of nearly 170 AK-47s in use in the Karnataka STF during the period failed to provide any indication to the origin of the bullet that killed Nagappa.

Tamil Nadu did not respond to requests to subject the weapons of its STF to ballistic studies and no effort was also made following Veerappan’s encounter death to establish whether any of the AK-47s seized from him were involved in the Nagappa killing.

The R G Vaidyanathan Commission of inquiry set up by the S M Krishna government to probe the killing said in its report two years ago to the government that the case should be handed over to the CBI since investigations involve two states.

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