CHENNAI: Relinquishing her post as Chennai police commissioner last Wednesday, Letika Saran said: “I am leaving with a bang.” And she meant it, literally.
Less than an hour before she addressed reporters, a special police team had shot Vellai Ravi (39), a dreaded criminal, who was plotting to kidnap former Karnataka MLA Venkataswamy.
Ravi, an eighth standard dropout, opened his rein of terror in 1991 and dominated Chennai’s crime chart throughout the 1990s.
He was booked five times under the Goonda Act and led one of the two rival gangs in Chennai. His only peer was Chera. With 21 cases against him, including five murders and seven attempt to murder charges, Ravi was lying low after the spurt of encounters in early 2000.
He revived his ‘abduction tactics’ and kidnapped Pammal Rajkumar, a businessman for a ransom of Rs 60 lakh early this year.
Ravi’s elimination marks the resurgence of encounters in a big way. A senior police official said: “We were keeping a watch on him after Pammal Rajkumar’s abduction. We had specific information that he was planning to abduct Venkataswamy for a ransom of Rs 1.5 crore.”
But for the routine protests by human rights groups, police encounters are seen as an effort to maintain law and order in the state.
Between April 2002 and November 2003, when Jayalalithaa was the chief minister, 11 gangsters fell to police bullets in Chennai. The police later went soft, but after the DMK came to power in May 2006, the new government decided to put its foot down.
