HUBBALLI: May 25, 1993 — the bloodiest day in the history of Karnataka when forest brigand Veerappan, along with his men, orchestrated an ambush targeting the head of the Karnataka Special Task Force, Gopal Hosur. It was 7 am that morning and a convoy of three STF jeeps were moving on Thalabetta and MM Hills Road when the occupants of the last jeep saw a large tree falling on the road behind them. This was done by the Veerappan gang so that reinforcements cannot reach the STF party.
Information regarding IPS officer Gopal Hosur travelling to MM Hills that morning had reached Veerappan through his informants. Hours before the convoy of KSTF head reached the ambush site, Veerappan’s men had almost chopped the large-sized tree which was later brought down on the road. Soon after the tree fell, the men who were standing behind the trees started firing indiscriminately at all the three jeeps. During 1993, there were at least 150 men in Veerappan’s gang that operated in the border forests of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Veerappan had brought in the maximum number of his men for the ambush.
Six police personnel were killed on the spot while four, including Gopal Hosur, were injured. The Task Force team at the base camp, which got news of the attack, launched an assault strike on Veerappan’s gang, killing 10 members before sunset the same day.
The policemen who survived the attack thought Hosur was dead. His vehicle was hit by 27 bullets. Hosur was hit by a bullet in his neck and one bullet had brushed against his head. He was rushed to hospital and the next months were not less than an ordeal for the police officer.
“With the bullet lodged in the sensitive neck region, the operation was complicated. Family members were under great pressure as doctors were not sure about my survival for all the six months. Every day, complications arose as the bullet had injured the windpipe and neck region. After some days, the doctors reported infection caused by poisoning from the bullet and I was isolated in a glass chamber bed for more than one month. But finally, I recovered after six months and rejoined duty,” recalls Hosur.
Revisiting ambush site
On May 25 this year, Gopal Hosur, along with his family members, decided to visit the ambush site. “I had never visited the site in the last 25 years. Maybe there was no occasion. But this time, even my family members who had gone through a hard time during my hospitalisation, wanted to see the place. Though the incident happened two-and-half decades ago, I still feel it happened yesterday. I visited the police station and checked the files of 1992-93 when I was posted here. I also met my old informers and visited Male Mahadeshwara temple the same day,” Hosur told TNIE.
It Exposed Lack of Knowledge About Jungle Warfare
Gopal Hosur recalled that the ambush which Veerappan’s team had laid was the third since the 1990s. Veerappan took his first casualty in Kodagu in 1983 by killing a forest officer. Before the ambush in M M Hills, he had struck twice killing 10 policemen in two incidents reported between 1990 and 1993. “The incidents proved that we were not ready for the kind of jungle warfare which Veerappan and his gang had adopted. Lack of thorough knowledge about the terrain was also another challenge for the STF,” Hosur noted. But the ambush and killing of policemen forced the state government further equip the Task Force better. Between 1993 and 1996 when IPS officer Shankar M Bidari was the commandant of the STF, he was able to reduce the Veerappan gang to just six.