Tiger panel for CBI probe in Bandhavgarh death

India’s tiger protection agency — National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) — has sought a CBI probe into the death of a tigress in Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh tiger reserve, suspecting government vehicles carrying relatives of a state Cabinet minister may have hit it.

Updated on: Jun 1, 2010, 23:40:15 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India’s tiger protection agency — National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) — has sought a CBI probe into the death of a tigress in Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh tiger reserve, suspecting government vehicles carrying relatives of a state Cabinet minister may have hit it.

The tigress, Jhurjhura, was spotted injured by tourists on the morning of May 19 in the Tala range of the reserve. She died a few minutes later. The death caused an uproar that spread beyond India’s borders through social networking sites such as Facebook.

MP’s Forest Minister Sartaj Singh said on Tuesday he was handing over the investigation related to the killing of the tigress to the CID.

NTCA member-secretary Rajesh Gopal, who visited Bandhavgarh this weekend, in a report to Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, said: “There are enough arguments/ evidences to indicate the two vehicles carrying (Akshay Kumar Singh), chief executive officer of zila panchayat, Umaria; (Lalit Kumar Pandey), forest range officer, Madhi and others were involved in the accident.”

Others in the vehicles reportedly included Singh’s relative; Dr K.K. Pandey, a veterinary assistant surgeon, said to be a person with considerable influence in the area, who was also present during Jhurjhura’s post-mortem; and three children.
Locals allege Singh’s relative is also the son of a minister in the state Cabinet.

In a clear violation of rules, two vehicles entered the park at 9.30 pm (beyond permitted timings) and visited the in-site enclosure at Baheraha for viewing the tiger cubs who were housed there, Gopal said. “The vehicles also went to the tigress spot in Tala and returned via the Bhadrashila barrier instead of the main gate, which is also cause of suspicion,” the report said.

While the state government suspended three officials for negligence, it failed to nail down the vehicle responsible. “The tigress’ post-mortem revealed that she was hit at least four times,” said Shehla Masood, a wildlife activist from Bhopal.

(With inputs from Bhopal)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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