PAk wild boArs creAting troUble At pUnjAb border

Pakistani wild boars have started troubling Indian farmers on Punjab’s international border. These boars have been playing havoc with the standing paddy crop across the barbed wire fencing in Fazilka district.

A deputation of farmers from the border villages of Teja Rohela, Mohar Jamsher, Mohar Sona, Mansa, Mohar Khiva and Mauzam recently met the Border Security Force officers for help. “We are not allowed to go across the fencing from dusk to dawn,” Dalip Singh of Mohar Khiva village, whose land is located across the barbed wire fencing, told The Sunday Guardian. “Our crops are left unattended. Herds of Pakistani wild boars are entering Indian territory and destroying the paddy crop.” It is not clear whether Pakistani Rangers are pushing these boars towards Indian crops.

Former sarpanch Mohinder Singh says that “the paddy crop is ready for harvest so the farmers are worried as wild boards damage the crops”. Farmers are demanding adequate compensation on account of the damage to crops.

Farmers are not allowed to sow tall crops across the fencing owing to security reasons. Some farmers used to put up the cobra wire around their agricultural plots but due to security reasons, this practice was discontinued. In the 1990s, a 533-km-long fencing was erected along the India-Pakistan border about 150 metres inside Indian territory with the aim to prevent infiltration and smuggling of arms and narcotics from the Pakistan side, as a result of which 54,721 acres of agricultural land came to be located across the fencing in Punjab. The Pakistani side of the border along Fazilka district is a habitat of wild boars.