Forest personnel arrested and court-forwarded 17 persons belonging to two groups on the charge of illegally catching fish in the Bhitarkanika National Park and the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary on late Tuesday night.
In the first incident, a forest personnel team led by Kanika Ranger Akhaya Kumar Nayak arrested eight persons and seized three mechanized boats, a 500-meter-long Bedha fishing net and 350 numbers of Bani poles (mangrove logs) from them while they were trying to flee from the Bhitarkanika National Park.
The arrested were identified as Uttam Dinda, Sankar Sethy, Gautam Dinda, Chitta Maiti, Bhima Jana, Babuli Dinda, Raghunath Jana and Belu Sethy, all belong to Jharkat village under the Bansada police limit in Dhamara area of Bhadrak district. “All the arrested persons were habitual offenders of the Wildlife Protection Act. They have been sent to judicial custody as there bail applications were rejected,” said Nayak.
Earlier, the Kanika forest range personnel had on October 9 nabbed 12 fishermen and seized 11 mechanised boats and 10 quintals bani log from their possession from the park area. In the second incident, forest personnel of Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary arrested nine fishermen and seized a trawler, fishing nets and three quintals of fish from them. The fishermen were arrested while catching fish in the ‘no fishing zone’ of the sanctuary area, informed Gahirmatha ranger Subrat Kumar Patra.
The arrested fishermen were identified as Gurudhar Pandakar, Sisil Mandal, Premananda Janha, Sankar Ari, Suro Mandal, Suresh Kar, Pandal Mandal, Susant Dakua and Sukumar Maity, all belonging to Talauchua area under the Rajnagar police station.
With these arrests, the number of arrested fishermen from the sanctuary area increased to 30 since fishing banned for seven months from Novemebr 1 for protection of Olive Ridley sea turtles, Patra said.