Chikkamagaluru: Did Bengaluru-based realtor Rafiq Ahmed, accused of poaching two Sambar deer at the Bhadra Tiger Reserve, manage to give the police the slip on Thursday evening?
After getting information from Chikkamagaluru SP K. Annamalai that the five people who have been arrested in the poaching case were trying to get bail through an advocate in Chikkamagaluru, District Crime Information Bureau (DCIB) sleuths assembled outside the advocate’s office near a temple at Vijayapura around 7.30 pm and caught Mustaq Ahmed and Ansar. besides seizing a four-wheeler. Others accompanying Mustaq escaped and it is suspected that Rafiq Ahmed was one of them.
The Basavanahalli police handed over the duo to forest officials, who questioned Mustaq and Ansar on Friday. Both of them maintained that Rafiq was not with them. They told the forest officials that they met the advocate in Chikkamagaluru to seek bail for their neghbour Akhtar Ahmed, a resident of Udayavara in Sakleshpur taluk of Hassan district.
Forest officials suspect that while 11 members of the group were caught red-handed with deer carcasses from their vehicles at the Kemmangundi checkpost early on Sunday morning, Rafiq fled from the scene in a four-wheeler with the firearm used in the hunt.
