Bargarh: The mystery surrounding the species of carcass recovered from Debrigarh Sanctuary in this district has come to an end after four persons arrested on charges of poaching the animal claimed that it was a Royal Bengal Tiger (RBT).
However, the forest officials continue to claim that it was a leopard and have refused to admit that the poached animal was an RBT.
The arrest of the four poachers has blown the lid off an attempt by an influential section of the forest department to claim that the animal as a leopard.
The arrested poachers were identified as Satyaban Sahu, Sushil Bhue, Gouri Mirdha and Jekria Tidu of Khajuria village under Bhatli police limits. They have admitted that the animal is a RBT which was killed after coming in contact with livewires laid for poaching wild animals. The accused were produced in a court and remanded in Bargarh sub-jail custody.
A tiger claw and whiskers of the animal were seized from their possession. Earlier, the forest officials, while recovering the carcass, had seized four teeth and a bloodstained sling from the spot October 29.
Divisional forest officer (DFO) Abhaya Kumar Dalei said the accused were shown two photographs of the animal out of which they identified the photograph of an RBT which they had killed.
He, however, said that the exact species of the animal will be finally determined by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in Dehradun and the National Centre of Biological Sciences (NCBS).
The accused claimed that the tiger was killed after coming in contact with livewires which they had drawn from an 11-kv transmission line to kill wild boars on a farmland in Kuibahal village in Debrigarh Sanctuary October 13. They noticed the carcass of the animal entangled in the livewires at 4 am the next day. They pulled out a claw, whiskers and teeth and carried the carcass in a sling and buried it.
The Crime Branch of the WII and a team from the National Tiger Conservation Authority will soon arrive here to conduct a probe. Earlier, the suspension of a forest guard and a forester over the animal’s death had drawn flak from various quarters.
PNN