Hopes on early release of Rajkumar

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, AUG. 6. The demands put forth by the forest brigand, Veerappan, for the release of the Kannada matinee idol, Mr. Rajkumar, and three others are ominously silent on the widely reported ransom amount of Rs. 50 crores.

The Chief Minister, Mr. S. M. Krishna, who held another round of talks with his Tamil Nadu counterpart, Mr. M. Karunanidhi, in Chennai today, has been proceeding on the assumption that the demands are really those of Veerappan, though some of them appear to be beyond the perceived knowledge and comprehension of a forest outlaw with little or no education.

Hopes have been raised in the State Government of an early release of the four following information given by Mr. Karunanidhi that the Tamil journalist, Mr. Gopal, had established contact with Veerappan and had in fact met him and also Mr. Rajkumar at the forest hideout. The Government is also happy that Mr. Rajkumar and the others held incommunicado are staying in a house inside the forest and not in a cave or the like.

The Chief Minister released the transcribed version of the demands of Veerappan, numbering ten (and sent through a cassette recording) and the joint response of the Tamil Nadu and the Karnataka governments to them at a press conference he addressed after his return from Chennai.

A major item of surrender on the part of Karnataka to the ten demands of Veerappan is to drop immediately the TADA cases faced by some of the followers of Veerappan who are now lodged in the jails in the State.

Mr. Krishna met Mr. Karunanidhi in Chennai, accompanied by the Union Minister for Culture, Mr. Ananth Kumar (who also attended the press meet), the Home Minister, Mr. Mallikarjun Kharge, the Director-General of Police, Mr. C. Dinakar, and others.

He asserted that Veerappan had not made any demand for payment of a ransom. His response to the questions whether the two governments believed that the ten demands had been placed by Veerappan himself or by some other individuals or organisation was: ``We do not know how the conditions were evolved. I do not know which forces are working''.

In defence of the decision to withdraw the TADA cases, the Chief Minister said that the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act no longer existed on the statute book. Moreover, those who were facing the charges had already spent seven years in jail without a trial. Once the TADA charges were withdrawn, they could be enlarged on bail by the courts.

Some of the important responses of the two governments are that the final verdict of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal would come out soon and if there was any problem in releasing 205 tmc.ft of water to Tamil Nadu, the Cauvery River Water Authority would take an appropriate decision; Karnataka had constituted an Authority on May 14,1999 as per the direction of the Supreme Court issued on April 15, 1999 to pay compensation to the victims of the riots which took place in the State during December 1991 and January 1992 as an offshoot of the Cauvery water dispute; both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka were issuing government notices, orders and rules in the minority languages in areas where the linguistic minorities constituted more than 15 per cent of the population and that the Karnataka Government would comply with the final recommendation of the National Human Rights Commission on the payment of compensation to the victims of the alleged harassment of villagers and tribals in the area of operations of the Joint Task Force constituted to apprehend Veerappan as the Karnataka High Court had stayed the panel constituted in that connection.

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Section  : Southern States
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