Eight persons including five policemen and two health workers were nabbed with tiger’s skin in naxal affected Dantewada town on Friday.
On the day of ‘Shivratri’ forest of police officers received inputs from their trusted sources that few people had reached Jagdalpur with tiger’s skin for performing pooja, a press release from Bastar police said on Friday.
On Friday early morning around 3 am, based on the inputs, intercepted a Mahindra MUV Danteshwari temple. During the MUV's searching police found a tiger skin.
The eight persons in MUV were held who informed that they had received tiger’s skin from two persons in Bhasni region of Dantewada.
The they include head constable Bhomraj Thakur (30), constables Arun Godiyam (30) and Pavan Kumar Nakka (32), assistant constables Rakesh Emla (25) and Babulal Majji (30), health personnel Har Prasad Gavde (41) and Surendra Kumar Dewangan (43), and Anil Nakka (25).
While the head constable was posted in Bastar, the other four policemen and two health personnel were posted in Bijapur district, police said.
According to police the accused were booked under the provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, it said.
Two assistant sub-inspectors Santosh Baghel and Ramesh Aganpalli posted in Bijapur have also been taken into custody for interrogation in this connection, the release said.
The involvement of police constables in the tiger skin case has irked the wild animal lovers and activists, Wildlife activists Nitin Singhvi said, “the unholy nexus of corrupt cops and forest officers need an impartial probe in Chhattisgarh because due to their involvement a large number of cases of poaching remained unreported. Secondly, the cases of illegal hunting of wildlife and smuggling have continuously increased in the state, Singhvi said.
