E-Paper
Uttarakhand man enters porcupine burrow to hunt, dies after getting stuck
Rescuers had to deploy an excavator to recover the man’s body from the porcupine’s burrow.
A hunting trip to catch a porcupine cost a man his life after he got stuck in its burrow in a remote forest area of Uttarakhand’s Bageshwar district.
The incident occurred in Kanda area. The man’s body was recovered after three days of efforts by police and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) around noon on Saturday, an official said.
“It took us three days to retrieve the deceased’s body since he had entered more than 30-metre deep into the burrow. We pressed an excavator to dig the burrow since it rocky and as such it took time. Finally on we recovered the body on Saturday noon,” said Mainpal Singh, tehsildar, Kanda Bageshwar.
Five persons, residents of Danuthal village of Kanda tehsil, 45 km from Bageshwar district headquarters had gone to the forest area on Wednesday for hunting a porcupine. They had lit grass to smoke out a porcupine from the deep burrow and covered it with a stone, villagers said.
Next morning, they reached the spot and one of them crawled into the burrow to extricate thee porcupine but didn’t return. Two of his companions - Harish Ram and Ramesh Ram - entered the burrow to look for him. They too got stuck after some distance but were pulled out by other villagers when they raised an alarm.
When they couldn’t locate the first person who had entered burrow, the villagers informed the local administration, following which police and SDRF teams rushed to the spot but they couldn’t recover anything on Thursday. On Friday, a n excavator was pressed into service to dig the burrow since it was rocky and difficulty terrain.
On Saturday, search operation resumed again and finally around noon the man’s body was recovered. He was identified as Jiwan Ram 42 of Danuthal village.
“Police have sent deceased’s body to Bageshwar for post mortem and authorities have been informed about the incident,” said the tehsildar.
“Danuthal is remote area of the Bageshwar and its villagers are poor and have no livelihood to earn. Most of them are daily wager, We are writing to administration for financial help to deceased’s family,” said Pankaj Dasila, a social activist of Kanda.
