HYDERABAD: The Wildlife Week celebrations in Telangana got off to a sour start with reports of poaching of a tiger in the Tadvai forests of Eturunagaram wildlife sanctuary coming into fore. The remains of a tiger – just some bones – were discovered in the forest on Sunday.
While the Mulugu district police and forest department officials announced the discovery and arrest of four persons for allegedly killing the tiger, what was not said was that this was possibly the tiger that entered the forests and heralded the return of the big cat to this forest 10 years after the last one was seen in the sanctuary.
Announcing the grisly discovery at a press conference on Sunday, Mulugu district superintendent of police Sangram Singh Ganpatrao Patil, and district forest officer Asheesh Singh, along with chief conservator of forests, Warangal, S.J. Asha, said the tiger had come to the Tadvai area from Chhattisgarh and was first spotted on August 19 this year. It was killed, they said, for its skin, and claws.
Acting on a tip off on Saturday that some persons belonging to Kodishala village from the Guthikoya communities were planning to go to Chhattisgarh to find buyers for the skin and claws, a joint team of forest and police officials conducted extensive vehicle checks on Sunday. During the inspections, they stopped a white car with four persons and on searching the vehicle, found a tiger claw.
The four men were identified as M. Suresh, M. Erumaiah, M. Mukesh, and M. Deva, all residents of Kodishala.
Upon interrogation, the officials said, the apprehended persons revealed that as their income from the podu cultivation was not enough to make their ends meet, in a bid to make more money, they planned to hunt wild animals and sell their meat or skins for money.
When they learnt that there was a tiger roaming in the forest, they decided to trap and kill it and on September 21, found the tiger dead in one of the traps they laid in the forest. In all, a gang of nine men reached the spot, skinned the tiger, divided the nails and skin among them and left the carcass there.
The officials said the four men arrested were planning to go to Chhattisgarh to collect advance money for selling the other body parts by showing the tiger nail as proof, when the police learnt of their plan. Upon further investigation, tiger skin, all legs barring the left hind leg, bones and teeth, and nails of the poached tiger were recovered.
A case has been booked against all the offenders under the Wildlife Act, 1972, and further investigation is in progress.
