Palamu Tiger Reserve team arrests three poachers, seize deer meat

Daltonganj, July 22: A team of a forester, forest guards and trackers of Betla range of the tiger reserve Palamu in a post-midnight July 22 raid at around 1 am at village Garee nabbed three poachers and seized utensils and lids with cooked and half-cooked deer meat.

Kumar Ashish, deputy director North division of PTR, confirmed the raid, arrest of poachers and seizures of the deer meat.

“Our boys also recovered two axes with which the deer could have been poached and later chopped off for meat purposes,” Ashish said.

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“Our team including the forester incharge Santosh Pal, forest guard Santosh Singh, D K Dev, Sandeep Kumar and Umesh Dubey was on the evening patrol when it spotted some blood on the grasses at the Garee protected forest. It trailed off the blood and discovered some more signs of any deer being poached, chopped off and taken down,” added the deputy director North division of PTR.

Ashish further said, “The team then got in touch with our moles who hinted at deer poaching at Garee village and our moles also dropped hints of who could have done the poaching of the deer. The team started its post-midnight operation. It was tough but handled with care and caution. Three houses were knocked at and the case of poaching of deer began to unfold faster than expected.”

The three poachers arrested have been identified as Ghanshyam Singh, Sitaram Bhuiyan and Rajinder Bhuiyan all of the Garee village under the Chhipadohar police station. They have been remanded in judicial custody in Latehar today.

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The three arrested poachers who were local were not kept in the Betla range office but were brought down to Kechki forest rest house, a distance of 21 kilometres away from Garee from where they were picked up at night,  to avoid any gherao or pressure of the locals for their release.

“We did not want to take any chance and so we decided to put up the three arrested at the Kechki rest house from where the trio were taken down to Latehar this morning to be produced before the court of the chief judicial magistrate Latehar today itself,” Ashish said.

On being asked about the hide and skull of the poached deer Ashish said the hide was made into various pieces while the head was smashed. He said it was deliberately done to avoid recovery of it but the team got it.

The three have been booked under sections of the Wildlife Protection Act.

Sources said a sample of 20 gms of cooked and uncooked deer meat so seized has been sealed for forensic test in Ranchi.