Veerappan Killed My Father 24 Years Ago: A Daughter Remembers

A daughter writes about the loss of a parent who was killed while trying to track down India’s most wanted criminal.

It’s  been 24 years since my father sacrificed his life for the state and country. My family and I have always been keenly aware of the vacuum that my father left behind, and wondered how life would have been different for all of us, if he was alive today.

My father, IPS officer T Harikrishna, fell prey to a misleading informer, while he was on the verge of nabbing Veerappan – a smuggler, a murderer, and a poacher who used to kill elephants for ivory, and who took many innocent lives in the dense forests of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The incident resulted in the death of my father and his colleague MR Shakeel Ahmed.

They were ambushed on 14 August 1992 in Mysore.

I was three years old and my brother, Pradyumna was two, when our father passed away. At the time, we were too young to realise the true meaning of a father, and his role in our lives. We only knew that the person who used to play with us and pamper us suddenly went missing from our lives one day.

Even my mother found it very hard to accept the reality and convey the same to us. It was only once we started growing up, that we got closure.

We understood the kind of person my father was and how courageous a human being he was to voluntarily decide to take down Veerappan.

As a result of that decision, my father was posted as the Special Task Force Chief. From that very moment the forest became his home. He used to spend months together in the forest to learn the whereabouts of Veerappan and his gang.

After my father passed away, we moved from Mysore to Bengaluru, but bringing us up single handedly was not easy for my mother.

We started school again, and when people asked us about our father and what he did, we proudly told them the story of our father, our hero. We do not mourn his loss, instead we celebrate his life. We always have been proud in the knowledge that our father was different from the rest.

But there are those times when curiosity gets the best of us – what kind of a father would he have been? Loving, kind-hearted or possessive and protective? I missed him the most on the day of my wedding. I just wondered how happy he would have felt doing my kanyadhana.

No matter how short a duration he was with us for, his ideals have always inspired us. Even today, when people remember and talk about him as a brave, strong and honest human being, our hearts are filled with pride, but the vacuum shall remain with us for the rest of our lives.

His death has not made us weak, it has given us strength to be as brave and strong as he was.