After years of high drama in the dense forest range of Sathyamangalam, elusive sandalwood smuggler Veerappan, who led a large team of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka Special Task Force on a merry dance for years before being killed in an ambush in October 2004, will reappear in a 125-episode television serial titled Sandhana Kaadu (Sandalwood Forest).

To be telecast from October 15 by the year-old Makkal TV, a Tamil channel backed by the Vanniyar leader Dr S Ramadoss of the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), all indications are that the serial would be focusing on the ‘human’ side of Koose Munisamy Veerappan, a Vanniyar (a most Backward Caste), and even eulogising the dreaded bandit accused of terrorising villagers, murdering more than 100 forest and STF personnel in encounters and poaching and killing elephants for ivory.

“I have delved deep into his psyche and I have shown how he had been exploited by forest officials, the police and politicians, his passionate outrage against exploitation of the poor, his anger when women were tortured and raped by STF personnel during their hunt for him and the way he retaliated against the wrong-doings,” V Gowthaman, who directed the serial, told The Indian Express. “We shot in villages where Veerappan is still deified and referred to as Anna (brother),” he said.

A small-time film director-turned-television serial maker, Gowthaman has to his credit a 77-episode serial on Auto Shankar, an autorickshaw driver-turned-don, who reigned over Thiruvanmiyur in Chennai with political and police patronage. Accused of several murders, Shankar was later sentenced to death by the courts. Gowthaman serialised the autobiography (on Makkal TV) which Shankar wrote in prison and which was featured in 77 issues of the Tamil magazine Nakkeeran, before he was executed in the mid-1990s.

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