Actor Darshan, wife booked under Wildlife Act

Forest officers said on Sunday that a video went viral on social media after the Makara Sankranti festival, in which actor Darshan was posing with a unique bar-headed goose, a migratory bird.

Forest department registered a case against Sandalwood actor Darshan Thoogudeepa, his wife Vijaya Lakshmi, and farmhouse manager Nagaraj on Saturday under Wildlife Protection Act for posing with a bar-headed goose, a migratory bird, officials said.

Forest department registered a case against Darshan Thoogudeepa, his wife and farmhouse manager under Wildlife Protection Act (Wikimedia Commons)

Forest officers said on Sunday that a video went viral on social media after the Makara Sankranti festival, in which actor Darshan was posing with a unique bar-headed goose, a migratory bird.

The forest mobile squad officers headed by DCF B Bhaskar raided the actor’s farmhouse on T Narasipura road and recovered four bar-headed geese, they added. HT has seen the video and can verify its authenticity.

“Acting on a tip-off, we inspected the farmhouse of the actor Darshan and found four bar-headed geese caged in. We immediately seized the birds and produced them before JMFC court, T Narasipura. The birds have been released at Hadinaru village lake,” DCF B Bhaskar said.

Bhaskar said a case was registered against the actor Darshan under Wildlife Protection Act 1972, Schedule 2. The department has served a notice to the actor to produce documents if permission has been obtained to possess these migratory birds, he added.

Birds of the bar-headed goose species are found in Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Tibet in Central Asia, and they are one of the world’s highest-flying birds (27,000 feet).

They fly higher than Mount Everest when they migrate over the Himalayas from Central Asia towards South Asia. As the days are shorter and nights longer during winters in the Northern hemisphere, these birds find it difficult to find food and migrate to India by crossing the mountains and living near the lakes of the Indian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, officials said.

Hadinaru lake, situated around 25 kilometres from Mysuru, is one of the favourite spots for bar-headed geese. Every year thousands of these migratory birds travel around 4,850 km to reach Hadinaru lake during the winter. As the cold in Central Asia subsides, the bar-headed geese migrate back north to breed.