Bangalore: Capturing Veerappan alive would have thrown light on the sordid saga of mayhem and kidnappings by the ruthless forest bandit who had killed 130 people and 2000 elephants, a former top Karnataka police officer said today (Oct 19, 2004).

An alive Veerappan could have been exploited to ferret out "interesting and useful" information for the police to learn, the society to know as well as unravel his alleged links with politicians, a former Karnataka STF Head, H T Sangliana, said in Bangalore.

A former Bangalore Police Commissioner and In-Charge of Karnataka STF in the year 2000, he said it appeared that the STF had prior information about Veerappan's movements last night (Oct 18, 2004) and in that scenario, the best thing would have been to cordon off the location in a bid to catch him alive by injuring him.

But he hastened to add that he is unaware of the amount of time that was available to the STF to carry out the "catch Veerappan" operation.

Sangliana, who jumped into politics after his retirement and became a Lok Sabha member of BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) from Bangalore North, sought to make it clear that catching Veerappan would have been ideal only if there was such an opportunity, and gave full credit to the Special Task Force for closing the chapter.