Varma to film chilling facts about Veerappan’s killing

Even before filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma’s ‘Killing Veerappan’ has gone on to floors, it has generated enough curiosity. The film will be a sequence of events that eventually led to the assassination of the notorious and most wanted criminal. “In fact Varma was taken aback when he heard the events that led to Veerappan’s killing from cops who supervised the shooting.

He in fact was bowled over by how the cops sifted and pursed every piece of information meticulously before executing their plan,” a source close to Varma says. The source adds that Varma, through the movie, will film chilling facts that led to the killing of the forest brigand. “The planning was such that 20- odd cops who killed Veerappan were unaware of who they were shooting in the first place.

Since the forest was his stronghold, he had to be brought out. The way in which the police – Special Task Force chief K Vijay Kumar and NK Senthamaraikannan who is credited with masterminding the intelligence aspects and coordinating the operation – cornered Veerappan’s vehicle (ambulance) and the events preceding it will send chills down the spines of the viewers.”

Veerappan, one of the most ruthless criminals the world has ever seen, killed more than 800 elephants and 227 people, including 72 police officers. Three state governments of India spent more than Rs 600 crore to catch him. Nearly 1,200 task force official were in search of him in a 16,000 sq km jungle for 15 long years.

The source shares that Varma, who has also written the screenplay, will be shooting the film in the languages the characters speak. “The police of Karnataka will speak in Kannada while the Tamil Nadu police personnel will be conversing in Tamil. Veerappan and his aides will be speaking in their mother tongue. In the interests of viewers of other languages, there will be a provision of subtitles.

“It will truly be an international experience on the lines of Kathyrn Bigelow’s ‘Zero Dark Thirty’,” the source adds. Varma, who has spoken to Veerappan’s daughters besides his wife Muthulaxmi as a part of gathering information on the sandalwood smuggler, will be taking the film to floors this month end. He will be shooting it mostly at real locations, a fact which he admitted to us recently.