Panna poachers turn smugglers

With not many tigers left in the Panna wildlife sanctuary, diamond smuggling has caught the fancy of one-time poachers, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Dec 31, 2008, 24:25:09 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Panna

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With not many tigers left in the Panna wildlife sanctuary, diamond smuggling has caught the fancy of one-time poachers.

Thousands of tribals in Panna dream of making a killing like Solomon Vandy, the character played by Djimon Hounsou in Blood Diamond. In the movie, Vandy smuggles a diamond out of a South African pit and sells it to become a millionaire.

But the pursuit of this dream has led to a cycle of exploitation. “Neither do the tribals know the value of the diamonds nor to they have the resources to sell them in markets like Mumbai. A stone they sell to diamond merchants for Rs 15,000 fetches lakhs in Mumbai,” said Alamgir (name changed), a conduit for unauthorised sale of diamonds, who earns a 10 per cent cut on every deal.

A finished stone with a carat’s value fetches close to Rs 3 lakh in Mumbai, said J.S. Solanki, Panna’s district diamond officer.

Solanki said Panna’s diamonds are sought after globally. But the tribals toil through the year to find one stone. “Every pebble is cleaned using bare hands. The fortunate few find more than two diamonds a year,” said wildlife conservationist Arun Singh.

Every diamond found in and around the Panna sanctuary should ideally be deposited with the district diamond office that auctions it to merchants twice or thrice a year. But only 10 per cent of these are actually deposited. “It is not possible for over a dozen constables to check over 1,000 mining pits,” says Singh.

Solanki admits to illegal trading of diamonds but says the amount traded is minuscule since Panna doesn’t have too many diamonds left.

Once known as the mining capital of India, the Supreme Court had banned extraction of stones in 2006 inside the reserve after conservationists said mining was disturbing wildlife, including tigers. But the apex court reversed its order on August 23 this year reasoning that the revenue can be used for the sanctuary’s conservation efforts.

Solanki says diamond smuggling was more rampant when mining was allowed in the core area that has many more diamonds than areas outside. Before mining was banned, the National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) found over 10,000 diamonds in a year compared to just 152 this year from areas where mining wasn’t banned.

With the ban lifted, when mines in the core area reopen next year, Singh expects illegal mining to also increase manifold.

Said Panna Tiger Reserve director LK Chaudhary: “We have asked NMDC to deposit Rs 69 crore to start mining. As soon as they deposit the money, as per Supreme Court directions, mining permission would be given.”

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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