Salman Khan to feature in list of most notorious wildlife criminals in India after blackbuck case conviction

Actor Salman Khan will be listed among the most notorious wildlife criminals of the country on the website of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB), a government body that combats poaching and related offences.

Khan, 52, was sentenced to five years in jail on Thursday for killing two blackbucks, a protected species, in Rajasthan twenty years ago.

“Any person convicted in wildlife crime finds a place in the list of convicts on our website,” said Tolitama Varma, the additional director WCCB,

Khan’s name will be among 35 other convicts jailed for various crimes under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. The convicts were found guilty of poaching tigers and smuggling pangolin scales and body parts, seahorse, snakes and other animals.

Black buck (Antelope cervicapra) is a Schedule I species under the act.

Native of India and extinct in Bangladesh, it is one of the species which has high conservation value in the country.

The animal is commonly known as Krishna mrig or Krishna saar and has been mentioned in Hindu scriptures as pulling the chariot of Lord Krishna.

Varma said that of the 35 convicts listed, most of them belong to Haryana, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh.

Six criminals, including a woman, were convicted for attempting to poach tigers at the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Tiger Reserve in Karnataka, bordering Tamil Nadu.

Three others were convicted for tiger parts smuggling from Amravati in Maharashtra while a woman from Haryana was convicted for attempting to hunt tigers in Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh.

Six other wildlife criminals were convicted for attempting to poach tigers in the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve and were sentenced in Haldwani, Uttarakhand.

Six Bawariya community tribe people were convicted for smuggling pangolin scales and body parts in other parts of the country.