The coastal region needs to be on vigil, as the possibilities of attacks in the form of 26/11 cannot be ruled out, former chief of State Intelligence department, Dr D V Guruprasad said on Thursday.
He was addressing the gathering during a talk on his book, ‘Dantachorana Bennatti’ a Kannada translation of K Vijay Kumar’s book ‘Chasing the Brigand’ based on the forest brigand Veerappan at the conference hall of Mangaluru City Police Commissionerate on Thursday.
The book was released in Bengaluru recently.
Dr Guruprasad, who is also former director of the department of Information and Publicity, recollecting his experiences as the head of the Intelligence department of the state during the tenure of three chief ministers, S M Krishna, Dharam Singh and H D Kumaraswamy, he recollected that a criminal like Veerappan had intelligence inputs on par with any top official of the government.
“Veerappan’s high-ended tactfulness in executing deadly attacks on former IGP Gopal Hosur and abduction of the Thespian Dr Rajkumar and minister Nagappa, justifies the very fact. Veerappan had his own intelligence system, which had rendered him invincible for many decades,” Dr Guruprasad
said.
“The ivory poacher was finally cornered in 2004, during a collaborative action by the police forces of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka states. K Vijay Kumar, who was a part of the force, wrote a book based on his experiences in the anti-Veerappan operation,” he added.
Another book on Veerappan
The former IPS officer revealed that he had embarked on an extensive research on Veerappan to write his second book on the poacher. “The book is expected to be released next month,” Dr Guruprasad said.
He has around 60 books to his credit, the recent being ‘Dantachorana Bennatti’ and ‘Goodhacharyeya Aa Dinagalu’.
To a query from journalists, Dr Guruprasad said the Supreme Court’s orders preventing political interference in the activities of the Police department were not implemented in toto. But a review petition in this regard is pending before the apex court, he added.
He said that it was a good development that the Intelligence department now had an exclusive recruitment process and urged police officials to be people-friendly.
Mangaluru Commissioner of Police Dr P S Harsha, DCP (Crime and Traffic) Lakshmi Ganesh K and DCP (Law and Order) Arunangshu Giri were also present.