After Arrests In Elephant Carcass Burning, Royal Bengal Tiger Skin Seizure Rings Alarm Bells For Odisha

Baripada: While three suspended forest personnel were arrested on Wednesday in connection with the secret burning of an elephant carcass in Similipal Tiger Reserve, a Special Task Force (STF) team recovered a skin of a Royal Bengal Tiger (RBT), which is on the verge of extinction, at Sridamchandrapur village under Udala tehsil in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district and arrested a poacher.

The raid was conducted on a tip-off and the poacher was nabbed while some officials posing as buyers were striking a Rs 5 lakh deal for the tiger skin, which was later seized from his possession. Two others, however, managed to escape.

It is believed that the big cat was hunted a month back.

Rampant poaching had Orissa High Court term 2022 as probably the worst possible year for elephants in forests of Odisha. While expressing disappointment over the non-filing of FIR by the forest department, the court on Tuesday asked the state government to submit an affidavit listing out the exact measures needed to be taken to prevent elephant poachings before the next hearing on December 22.

“We are reacting to a situation all the time, but not preventing anything from happening,” a two-judge bench comprising chief justice S Muralidhar and justice Murahari Sri Raman noted.

Last Thursday, three officials of the forest range including a ranger officer allegedly burnt the carcass of a sub-adult tusker killed by poachers near Bakua village in Jenabil range of Similipal tiger reserve and its tusk sawed off, and then threw the burnt bones in a river and stream.

A case was registered against them under appropriate sections of the Wildlife (protection) Act, 1972, after bone samples tested at Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT) tested revealed that it was a tusker.

The arrested have been identified as Jenabil Range forester-in-charge Shiba Shankar Samal, forester of Gurandia section Chandrabhanu Behera and forest guard Binod Kumar Das of Special Tiger Protection Force.

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