The Indian Police Service is a civil service under the All India Services. It replaced the Indian Imperial Police in 1948, a year after India became independent from the British Empire.
Koose Munusamy Veerappan was an Indian criminal who was active for 36 years from 1968 to 2004. He was charged with sandalwood smuggling and poaching of elephants in the scrub lands and forests in the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. He was wanted for killing approximately 184 people, about half of whom were police officers and forest officials. He was also responsible for poaching approximately 500 of the 2000 elephants killed in the peninsular region where he was active and for smuggling ivory worth US$2.6 million and about 65 tons of sandalwood worth approximately US$22 million.
Nakkheeran Gopal is a veteran writer and journalist from Tamil Nadu, India. He is the editor and publisher of the Tamil political investigative journal Nakkheeran. He came to national fame in the 1990s when he interviewed sandalwood and ivory smuggler Veerappan, who was surviving in the forests and committing crimes on the Tamil Nadu–Karnataka border, eluding the police of the two states. Footage from his encounters with Veerappan have been used to create Koose Munisamy Veerappan.
P. Kakkan or fondly known as Kakkan, was an Indian politician and freedom fighter who served as a member of the Constituent Assembly of India, Member of Parliament, President of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee and in various ministerial posts in Congress governments in the erstwhile Madras state between 1957 and 1967.
K Vijay Kumar, IPS, is a retired IPS officer. He was the chief of the Special Task Force of Tamil Nadu that was involved in the death of the Veerappan during Operation Cocoon of 2004. He had also been the senior advisor to Home Ministry for the Left Wing Extremism areas. He served as the Advisor to the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir with Home, Forest, Ecology & Environment, Health & Medical Education, Youth Services & Sports, Hospitality & Protocol, Civil Aviation, Estates and Information portfolios. Currently he has joined back as senior security adviser in Ministry of Home Affairs in December 2018.
C. Sylendra Babu is an Indian Police Service Officer who served as the Director General of Police and Head of Police Force, Tamil Nadu Police. He retired on June 30, 2023 and was succeeded by Shankar Jiwal, IPS.
Shankar Mahadev Bidari is an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, who was the Director General and Inspector General of Police (DGP) of the state of Karnataka.
The Vachathi case involved a mass crime that occurred on 20 June 1992 in the village of Vachathi, in Dharmapuri district, Tamil Nadu. A team of 155 forest personnel, 108 policemen and six revenue officials entered the Tribal-dominated Vachathi village, searching for smuggled sandalwood and to gather information about Veerappan. Under the pretext of conducting a search, the team ransacked the villagers' property, destroyed their houses, killed their cattle, assaulted around 100 villagers, and raped 18 women.
Attahasa (transl. Defiance) is a 2013 Indian Kannada-language biographical film directed by A. M. R. Ramesh, based on the notorious forest brigand Veerappan. Kishore plays the role of Veerappan in the film, whilst featuring Arjun Sarja and Suresh Oberoi. After much delay in the theatrical release the film was opened to screens on 14 February 2013 all across the southern states of India to positive reviews. The film was partially reshot in Tamil as Vana Yuddham. The film was dubbed into Telugu as Veerappan.
B. B. Ashok Kumar is a retired Assistant Commissioner of Police credited with arresting several notorious criminals and the many police encounters in which he was involved trying to capture hardened criminals.
The Palar Blast was a landmine attack on 9 April 1993 in Karnataka, India. The attack, organized by the forest brigand Veerappan, killed 22 people, making it the deadliest explosive attack in Karnataka during the 20th century.
Operation Cocoon was an operation launched by the Special Task Force of Tamil Nadu Police to capture the forest brigand Veerappan and his associates, who were dominant in Sathyamangalam Forest in the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. The operation was headed by K. Vijay Kumar, and N. K. Senthamarai Kannan.
Killing Veerappan is a 2016 Indian Kannada-language biographical crime film directed by Ram Gopal Varma, who co-wrote the film with K. Balaji. The film is based on the events leading to Operation Cocoon to capture or kill Indian bandit Veerappan. Featuring Shiva Rajkumar in the central role touted to be based on N. K. Senthamarai Kannan, the then Superintendent of police, with the Indian Special Task Force, and the spy who masterminded Operation Cocoon.
R. Nataraj, I.P.S. is a retired Indian Police Service officer, who also served as the former chairman of the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission. He is known for his public service career that spans over four decades, that further continued after his retirement as Director General of Police in 2011. He belongs to the 1975 officer's batch and has served in various state and central government capacities. Furthermore, he has been a part of the Central Reserve Police Force and has served in the difficult areas of North-East and Jammu and Kashmir. He was the first secretary of the Indian High Commission in Kathmandu from 1986 to 1990.
N. K. Senthamarai Kannan is a Police Commissioner, and former Inspector General of Police in the Indian Police Service. He is the first Tiruppur city police commissioner. He has also served as a Special Task Force spy who headed the intelligence wing in the Operation Cocoon, behind the encounter with the notorious bandit Veerappan under the leadership of K. Vijay Kumar. The 2016 film Killing Veerappan is based on the operation carried out by him. Kannan is a 1997-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, who entered the State police service as a Deputy Superintendent of Police in 1989, and was later conferred IPS in 2003 with six years’ retrospective effect. He studied Economics in The American College, Madurai and later became Asst Professor in Economics in the same college from 1985, worked there till he entered Tamil Nadu State Police service in 1989.
Veerappan is a 2016 Indian Hindi-language biographical action crime film written and directed by Ram Gopal Varma. The film is based on the real-life Indian bandit Veerappan and the events leading to Operation Cocoon, a mission to capture and kill him. The film is a remake of the Kannada film Killing Veerappan (2016) starring Shiva Rajkumar. The film stars Sandeep Bharadwaj, Sachiin J Joshi, Lisa Ray and Usha Jadhav.
Beladamadu Gangadhar Jyothi Prakash Mirji is an Indian Police officer who served as the Commissioner of Bangalore City Police from 2 May 2011 to 5 April 2013. He joined as Deputy Superintendent of Police later getting promoted to the Indian Police Service. He retired as the Principal Secretary of the Home department, Government of Karnataka.He is well known for spearheading the operation to tackle down the dreaded forest brigand Veerappan, as the chief of the Karnataka Special Task Force. Mirji was rewarded with the President's Vishisht Seva Medal in 2008, a Police Medal for meritorious and distinguished service.
Archana Ramasundaram, also spelt as Archana Ramasundram, is a retired Indian police officer who was a member of Tamil Nadu Police. She served in the Indian Police Service (IPS) for 37 years until her retirement in 2018 and was the first woman police officer of India to lead a central paramilitary force. Her husband Ramasundaram served as a senior state IAS officer in the state of Tamil Nadu until 2011.
Beela Rajesh is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer serving as the Secretary of Commercial Taxes and Registration who is predominantly known for been at the forefront of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Sanjay Arora is an IPS officer of the 1988 batch, Tamil Nadu cadre. He is currently serving as the Police Commissioner of Delhi. He has also served as the Chief of Indo-Tibetan Border Police and Sashastra Seema Bal.
