‘We needed Veerappan to show us that in making of any criminal, system is complicit’

PTI, Jan 18, 2024, 6:02 PM IST

The man may have inspired countless films, but they haven’t scratched even the surface of his complex character, said Sharath Jothi, the director of the latest docuseries on the notorious sandalwood smuggler, ‘Koose Munusamy Veerappan’, currently being streamed on Zee5.

Vasanth Balakrishnan, one of the writers of the series, said the idea behind the project is to show the world that the system is complicit in the making of any criminal.

“Films that have been made with Veerappan as a protagonist have either portrayed him as a notorious villain or a gangster. But he is much more than that,” added Balakrishnan.

The six-part docuseries is based on the nine-hour interview that Veerappan had given to a Tamil publication, ‘Nakkeeran’, way back in 1993. It is jointly produced by the publishers of ‘Nakkeeran’ and Zee5.

In a zoom interview to PTI, both Jothi and Balakrishnan hinted at another season. They also said the team chose the documentary format to let the audience gauge for themselves the many shades that made the man. “This story deserved its own path. There are a lot of stories out there, but they always took a side. Even the other series (Netflix had recently produced ‘The Hunt for Veerappan’) had its own perspective. We thought it would be unique to have Veerappan himself tell his story,” said Jothi.

According to the writer-director duo, another unique thing about the series is that it also tells the story of the common people, who suffered a lot as they were caught between Veerappan and the police.

Balakrishnan said the general fascination people seemed to have for gangsters and drug lords helped them when they tried to pitch the story to OTT platforms.

“The success of ‘Narcos’, which traced the life of Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar, proved that across the globe, people are hungry for more insight into drug lords and other notorious criminals,” added Balakrishnan.

Balakrishnan, who heads the online content team at ‘Nakkeeran’, said the interview with Veerappan happened because founding editor ‘Nakkeeran’ Gopal couldn’t believe that the man in the picture issued by the police – in the picture he was looking scrawny and was without his now famous moustache – did all those cruel things attributed to him. “He looked so ordinary in that picture that Gopal wanted a recent photograph of him. And he wanted more details. He pushed his reporters from Salem and Erode to get an exclusive interview with the man,” said Balakrishnan.

He said Gopal’s daughter Prabhavati came up with the idea of making use of the archived video footages of the magazine to make documentaries. “I worked together with her on a lot of projects earlier – some of these documentaries are released on YouTube – but none of them are on the same scale as Veerappan’s docuseries,” added Balakrishnan. Jothi said he came into picture after they roped in Zee5. “I was assisting director Shankar. I had worked with him on two projects – ‘I’ and ‘2.0’ – for about eight years. When I was approached by the producing team, I agreed immediately. What drew me to the project was the format, because I cannot think of another docuseries in Tamil. So, when it was going to be happening for the first time, I wanted to be a part of it,” added Jothi.

While working on the documentary, Jothi said he realised that the archives of ‘Nakkeeran’ is a goldmine of information that could feed many such exciting docuseries.

“You can probably do nearly five seasons, maybe more, with the various political movements that shaped Tamil Nadu. You know, trace the political decisions of MGR, Karunanidhi, Jayalalithaa… Regional politics is never seen as a proper story as such, and everything is fictional right now. But life is stranger than fiction. Probably if there is a chance to do such a documentary series, I will love to do it,” added Jothi.