Operation Cocoon

in 2000 Veerappan (18 January 1952 – 18 October 2004), was an Indian bandit, who was active in the forested area covering about along the borders of the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. He started engaging in criminal activities in the 1970s, and was briefly arrested in 1986. He was wanted for poaching of more than 500 Indian elephants for ivory and illegal logging and trafficking of more than 10,000 tonnes of sandalwood. In the late 1980s, he started murdering forest officials, who were intervening with this operations. In the 1990s, special task forces was constituted by the governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to try and capture him. Though it initially curbed his activities, he continued to indulge in illegal activities and had the support of the tribal people living in the periphery of the forests. He later kidnapped Nagapppa, a retired minister of Karnataka, who was later found dead. For over two decades, Veerappan defied the government, and maintained a small army, which at one point numbered hundreds. ==Operation==

, who led the operation In 1991, the joint Special Task Force (STF) was instituted by the state governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, to capture Veerappan and his associates. The search extended for more than a decade and costed more than . In 2004, the Tamil Nadu special forces, launched Operation Cocoon in the Sathyamangalam forests, which was headed by K. Vijay Kumar, and N. K. Senthamarai Kannan. According to the police summary, the operation required ten months of planning. The execution required three weeks, and the final operation lasted only 45 minutes. Veerappan and three of his associates were killed in the operation. Veerappan was shot three times, with bullet injuries, on his forehead, hip and ribs. == Aftermath ==

After the operation, the STF recovered a Remington rifle, two AK-47s, a self-loading rifle, two hand grenades and cash worth . The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu announced a cash reward of , a plot of land, and job promotions to all the 752 members of the STF team involved in the operation. Vijaya Kumar was awarded the President’s Police Medal for Gallantry on the 58th Independence Day in 2005 for his role in leading the operations. ==Popular culture==

In 2010, Jungle Lodges and Resorts, a Karnataka government undertaking, launched a jungle trek and camp covering the regions where Veerappan once lived. In 2016, Vijay Kumar announced that he was writing a book penning down his first hand account of the operation. He said that he would not reveal any names in the book, but rather would focus on incidents that had led to the killing of Veerappan. Santhanakadu, a 125 episode Tamil tele-serial was telecast on Makkal TV in 2007. Kannada films Attahasa (2012) and Killing Veerappan (2016), and a Hindu film Veerappan were based on the incident. The Hunt for Veerappan was a docuseries about the operation that was streamed on Netflix in August 2023. ==References==