Suniel Shetty to play as Shankar Bidari

Bengaluru: Koose Muniasamy Veerappan aka Veerappan was a dreaded outlaw of southern India for more than 20 years. Since 2004, when the forest brigand Veerappan was killed, there have been many unsubstantiated rumours, and other theories about what actually took place that night. Veerappan was killed, but, how did the Special Task Force (STF) manage to bring him out of his inviolable forest and what was the role of Karnataka police in smoking out the brigand.

Now, Director AMR Ramesh's new web series titled 'Veerappan - Hunger for Killing' will be the answer for the Karnataka police role in operation. It was said that the Karnataka police efforts in the operations was mainly to reduce Veerappan's gang from three digits to single digit.

As it was reported earlier, Ramesh is coming up with a multilingual web series, for which shooting was resumed after the lockdown relaxation. With Kishore reprising the role of Veerappan, and now the news for the team is that Bollywood 'Anna' Suniel Shetty will be joining the sets in a few days. Suniel Shetty will be playing the role of a police officer, Shankar Bidari for the series. He will be joining the sets this month for a 25 to 30 days' schedule.

Considering that the story of Veerappan has been attempted by a few directors in Sandalwood including himself, with Attahasa in 2013 and also by Ram Gopal Verma. Director AMR Ramesh was blamed by many senior police officers for not including Shankar Bidari and Karnataka police department's role to hunt Veerappan in his film.

Shankar Bidari, former Karnataka Director General of Police, was reportedly leading the operation STF (1990s) against Veerappan on the Karnataka side and had spread the police network all over Veerappan's area of operation. It was later alleged that the policemen committed serious offences while tracing the whereabouts of the brigand.

"It was all because of the shortage of time and other internal reasons which It could not happen to present the intricate details in the film. Also, there was a lot of pressure from the Censor Board and the government. Attahasa, as a film, was only two-and-a-half hours and was forced to compress. But now the story will be shot for 10 hours and for this new web series, there are no restrictions as the entire story will be told," a team member claims.

According to reports, the team plans to bring in actor Vivek Oberoi, and is currently in talks with the actor's father, Suresh Oberoi. Along with Kishore, the actors who worked in Ramesh's film Attahasa are also a part of the web series. They include Ravi Kale, Sampath, Raai Laxmi, Viayalakshmi, and Suchendra Prasad. The 10-episode-web series, will be produced under AMR Pictures, will have music by Vijai Shankar with two DOPS Vijay Milton and Vaidy S will be handling the camera.