Veerappan: India's Most Wanted Man

This book is all about how a hard-nosed journalist has gone about unravelling the story of one of the most intriguing men in the world of crime today. Wonderfully descriptive and finely balanced in the treatment of the story, this book is one of the best works in the crime thriller genre in a long time. Just go for it!

In the book, the author Sunaad Raghuram has done one very important thing. And that is, he has very consciously avoided valourising or romanticising a bandit whose exploits are the stuff fiction is made of. This in itself adds a great deal to the credibility of the book and its worth.This is a book which perfectly captures the starkness of banditry and its consequences, the writing style being a combination of deadpan straightness and descriptive expansiveness.It tells us all we wanted to know of the infamous Veerappan in a manner which is quite seriously praiseworthy, page after page revealing vignettes of the man, his methods and madnesses which were hitherto completely unknown to the outside world.Any aficianado of the thriller genre would lap up this book.

Veerappan-what kind of a man could he be to have not just eluded law enforcers for decades but also inflicted unimaginable horrors on entire forces of policemen who have gone after him? Can any terrain be so inhospitable that a man can get away every time after committing the most heinous of crimes? What is it that makes Veerappan a lord of the jungle who cannot be touched? Lastly, can any man survive for so long in one of the densest and forbidding jungles of the world and how? Do these questions sound absoultely theatrical and far fetched in the context of the modern world?Well, this book tells us how shockingly true it is for one man to have done the most horrendous and at times quite awesome acts for any human being in this world.Reading the book gives one a serious rush of adrenalin, a sense of uncontrollable curiosity to go further and understand the methods and madnesses of a bandit, the like of whom the world has perhaps never seen before.Sunaad Raghuram's handling of the story and its narration is exemplary in the sense that he never once gives you the feeling that he is overstating a fact or exaggerating or even creating a halo around the protagonist.No wonder he is the first journalist in the world to have done serious research on the phenomenon called Veerappan that is obviously so far removed from the day to day reporting of the man and his deeds almost always laced with half-truths stemming from a hollow understanding of the core points involved. Really a remarkable achievement for a first time writer.

An exciting book which keeps you engaged till the very end.Wonderfully descriptive, it is a thoroughly engrossing account of the bandit who has held India and the world in thrall.The book's strength lies in the sheer depth of the author's research and journalistic talent.Truly, a cracker of a book on one of the most intimidating and dangerous bandits of all time.

This is the book for everyone who has been fascinated by Veerappan and is dying to read some initiated reporting rather than idiotic tongue-in-cheek exoticism in foreign press and Indians on web forums screaming "EXTERMINATE VEERAPPAN!...". Raghuram's account is extraordinarily well-written, and provides all the background a foreign reader needs on caste, geography and local history and politics to turn Veerappan from incomprehensible third-world moustache icon to an understandable criminal in a society you can relate to, populated by real men and women. The writing is very clear and not at all floral; however the many south Indian names on each page combine with the dry English to give the text a real-world beauty quite different from (and superior to) any contrived romanticism. And indeed, what is romantic about this ruthless mass murderer and eco-bandit in a land of suicides and social ills?