koose Muniswamy Veerappan is dead. The thousands of commandos that combed the Satyamangalam forest in Tamil Nadu for 12 years, looking for him, must feel vindicated. The forest department must be celebrating. Now, it is being said, the dastardly sandalwood smuggling business will also die. But Karnataka still reports sandalwood smuggling to the tune of 500 tonnes. Given that Veerappan wasn't much involved in this activity of late, the sense of comfort his death evokes is tinged with a discomfiting thought: how many more Veerappans are out there?

The rise and sublimation of Veerappan to a mythic brigand is directly proportionate to the fall in logical thinking the forest bureaucracy exhibits. Till 2001, trade in sandalwood was a government monopoly, a huge fillip to illegal trade