A four-member team of emissaries would leave for the jungles on Tuesday on the sixth mission to secure the release of Kannada superstar Rajkumar, being held hostage by forest bandit Veerappan, official sources said here on Monday night. They said that the much awaited 'signal' from the bandit had been received and the emissaries were all set to leave for the Sathyamangalam forest on Tuesday morning.
The emissaries are Tamil Nationalist Movement leader P Nedumaran, Tamil magazine Nakeeran editor R R Gopal and human rights activists Prof B Kalyani and G Sukumaran. The first four missions undertaken by Gopal had ended in failure while the fifth attempt in which three new emissaries also participated, resulted in the release of S A Govindaraj, son-in-law of Rajkumar, on October 16. Earlier, on September 28, Nagappa Maradagi, another hostage, had escaped. Besides Rajkumar, his nephew Nagesh is also being held by the bandit since July 30. Bureau Report