Documentary on forest officer P Srinivas

The first-ever documentary on P Srinivas, the forest officer who was killed by the infamous forest brigand, Veerappan, was released on Monday.

The documentary was released in the city by Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Punati Sridhar. The film has been conceived by a team of three young conservationists -- Rahul Taranath, Naveen Kumar and Chandrashekar Reddy.

The documentary can be accessed on Youtube as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENYlqY7o9Tg&t=15s.

According to Rahul Taranath, it was their first project and took the trio two months to make. “There are many books, movies and documentaries on Veerappan and the police officials. But none on Srinivas. He was the real hero in the story of Veerappan. Though he died 28 years ago, he has been forgotten. Some books have mentioned him rather sketchy. We found him very interesting,” Taranath told DH on the sidelines of the release.

The documentary dwells into Srinivas’ early days in Gopinatham, the village in Tamil Nadu where he was born, a temple he built and how he joined the Karnataka forest department. His relationship with the villagers and the lives of all those he touched are captured in the documentary. The film highlights Srinivas’ Gandhian style of working in conservation, apart from chronicling how he reformed 120 poachers, helped many people and built 40 homes with his own resources.

The trio approached the forest department for guidance on the project. They are now working on producing another documentary on the Bandipur forest fire.