Sariska asks wildlife crime control for help

ALWAR:The Sariska Tiger Reserve (STR) administration has decided to seek help of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB), a Central body under the ministry of environment and forests that combats organised wildlife crime in the country, to look into the alleged poaching of tigress ST-5.

ST-5, relocated from Ranthambore in July 2010, was last seen in Sariska’s Akbarpur forest range on February 24 with tiger ST-11. The STR administration declared her missing after it failed to find any trace of her. The tiger died on March 19 after it got snared in an agriculture field.

When 30-year-old Sarfuddin Meo was arrested from Bhadoli village on October 24 on charges of poaching nilgai and sambhar, he confessed to having killed tigress ST-5, along with four others in February itself.

He told the forest officials that they were waiting to kill sambhar and nilgai when one of them shot dead the tigress. Later, they sold its skin to someone in Gurugram, he told the officials.

“Based on the information provided by Meo, we are conducting raids at various places to arrest the main accused in the case,” said STR deputy conservator of forest Hemant Singh. “We have sought help of WCCB to get links of the people who were present during the poaching,” he added.

Meanwhile, forest officials took Meo to the alleged spot where the tigress was shot dead. “We are trying to verify what he has told us so far. The information will be further verified when other people are arrested,” Singh added.

Earlier, after the forest department got Meo’s custody for four days, he told them that after shooting the big cat, they pelted her with stones to make sure that it was dead. He told the forest officials that he got ~20,000 for his part and teeth and nails of the tigress. “He said he gave the tooth and nail to his sister’s husband. We are trying to verify this information and will recover these soon,” said an official involved in Meo’s interrogation, without wanting to be named.

The forest department is conducting raids in Baleta and Bhadoli villages of Alwar and some villages in Bharatpur to get to other people involved in the poaching.

Meanwhile, people in Meo’s native village protested his arrest on Sunday. Sarpanch of Prithvipura, the gram pannchayat under which Bhadoli is a revenue village, said Meo has falsely been implicated in the poaching case, a charge denied by the STR officials. “We arrested him for poaching of sambhar and he told us about killing the tigress, too,” theysaid. FormerCongressMLA Tika Ram Jully has also jumped into the row with the demand for a high-level inquiry. STR DCF Singh said they were ready for any inquiry.

Sariska tiger reserve, 200km from Delhi, is spread across 800 sq km with a core area of approximately 500 sq km. It lost all its tigers in 2005 and was repopulated with tigers from Ranthambore. Currently, it has 12 adults and five cubs.