POACHERS USE EXPLOSIVES TO KILL DEER

A spotted deer was killed when it bit on a balllike substance that was stuffed with explosives. Cops suspect that poachers had placed the explosive in the forest beside S.V. University, close to the Alipiri-SV Zoo Park road in Tirupati.

Forest officials received information at about 8.30 am on Saturday from locals about an injured spotted deer, whose jaw was shattered due to the explosion. The officials rushed to the spot and shifted the deer, which appeared to be nearly five years old, to the zoo hospital where it died at about noon during treatment.

Forest officials immediately deployed their staff to search for more such booby traps in the forests. Officials said sniffer dogs too would be pressed into service.

Tirupati divisional forest officer M. Nagarjuna Reddy told this newspaper that the deer was injured while eating a substance that had explosives. “We are investigating the killing. We have pressed our staff to check vulnerable points inside the forests so that more animals are not killed.”

A forest official on condition of anonymity said that poachers who kill wild boar coat a ball of gunpowder with flour. The animals come to eat the flour but the device explodes when they bite into it. There have been several instances in the past when poachers had put up such traps for boars.