Poachers escape due to slackness of officials

[Guest guest]

Poachers escape due to slackness of officials

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

 

Gurdaspur, August 29

Political pressure and slackness of the Forest Department officials helped

escape hunters and possible destruction of the evidence in a poaching case.

 

Yesterday at 9 am former wildlife wardens from Gurdaspur Sukhdeep Bajwa and

Gunraj Singh informed the Dasuya and Gurdaspur Forest Department officials about

the movements of poachers in the area. They passed the information that some

poachers from area of Gurdaspur had hunted down blue bulls in the forests of

Himachal along the border of both the states. They brought the kills to area and

were selling the meat among the locals.

 

However, it took forest officials of Gurdaspur more than six hours to raid the

said area where the accused were selling meat of hunted animals. The forest

officials raided told areas at 3 pm. Due to the delay in the raid they recovered

just pieces of uncooked and cooked meat suspected to be of the hunted animals.

 

They arrested Mussa Mohamad from whose house the meat was recovered. Other

members of group that allegedly carried out the poaching could not be arrested.

The sources available here told that other accused in the case could not be

arrested due to the political pressure exerted by the senior Congress leaders

and government functionaries from Qadian. A forest official from Gurdaspur told

on the condition of anonymity that he received at least 24 calls from the

persons in high positions issuing orders against booking all accused in the

case.

 

DFO Pathankot Range Sahota told cooked and uncooked meat recovered from the

accused has been sent to the Hyderabad forensic laboratory for examination on

delay on the part of the forest officials in raiding the spot where the meat of

hunted animal was being sold, he said as per the information provided to them

the meat of hunted blue bulls was being sold at a place of worship of a

particular community. So, they had to exercise caution while entering the place

of worship to avoid tension. About the political pressure exerted for letting

the accused off, he said that pressure for releasing in the accused in hunting

cases was a routine matter and does not affect their functioning.

 

Mr Sukhdeep Bajwa, the former honorary wildlife warden from the area said that

since the government had not extended their appointment since February 2005 they

did not have the power to nab the culprits despite having definite information

regarding their activities. Still they informed the Forest officials about the

movements of the hunters. The poachers accused in the said case have earlier

also been apprehended for hunting in the Himachal area. Two cases of poaching

have been registered against them in Una district of Himachal.

 

Honorary wildlife wardens Sukhdeep Bajwa and Gunraj Singh had caught former SDM

Pathankot Puneet Geol for hunting a peacock in the jungles of Hoshiarpur. Since

then they have helped the Forest Department towards many poachers who were

openly in the area. However, despite the good work the government has not

extended their posting as honorary wardens. The government was not availing free

services of experts who had helped them tackling the menace of poaching in

Gurdaspur and Hoshiarpur districts.

 

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050830/punjab1.htm#5

 

 

 

 

Dr.Sandeep K.Jain

 

 

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