The Assistant Inspector General of Forests, National Tiger Conservation Authority, Sanjay Kumar had written to the Uttarakhand Chief Wildlife Warden SS Sharma on May 6 seeking actual facts regarding the letter he had written to the Corbett tiger reserve director in 2013 regarding a tiger poaching case and notorious tiger poacher Dariya Bawaria.
However, Sharma who is also the State Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, has yet to respond to the NTCA letter.
It will be recalled that Sharma had written a letter (number 257/6-37) to the Corbett director on January 23, 2013 stating that based on conversation with Dariya it seems that he was not involved in the poaching of a tiger at Bijrani in Corbett in 2012.
In the letter, the chief wildlife warden further asked the Corbett director to extract available information from Dariya and consider his case sympathetically.
On May 6, the NTCA wrote to Sharma seeking actual facts about his letter to the Corbett director in 2013 regarding Dariya and the Bijrani poaching case.
The authority has sought actual facts regarding the letter and its subject from Sharma. Talking to The Pioneer, the NTCA member secretary
Dr Rajesh Gopal said that Sharma had not yet responded to the letter sent by the
authority.
“I was away for a couple of days but to my knowledge our letter has not yet been replied to,” he said.
People for Animals, Uttarakhand member secretary Gauri Maulekhi who had released Sharma’s letter to the media here said that with a new principal secretary in the forest department, it is expected that the pending works will soon be addressed.
“Some senior officers have had a free run for long enough. Documented evidence of serious anomalies in departmental works and corruption by senior officers have been ignored by the State authorities for long now,” she said.