After a brief lull, the poachers have killed another one-horned rhino in Assam’s famous Kaziranga national park.
The incident came to notice on Friday after the guards recovered a carcass of a male rhino in Balipukhri area under Agaratoli range of the park. The horn of the rhino was found missing, which indicated it to be a case of poaching.
“Gun shots were heard from inside the park on Wednesday night and our guards immediately launched an operation in the park. However, nothing was recovered that day. We believe the carcass recovered today was the rhino killed by poachers on Wednesday,” said a senior park official on Friday.
According to official records, this is the fifteenth one-horned rhino to be killed by poachers this year. The park, a UNESCO world heritage site, has been struggling to check the menace of rhino poaching which had increased manifold in the last couple of years.
Assam forest minister Pramila Rani Brahma immediately rushed to the park after recovery of the carcass and asked the officials to intensify operations against the poachers.
Although the newly sworn-in BJP led Assam Government had prioritised the issue of rhino poaching and taken several steps to stop the menace, the efforts are yet to be effective enough to stop the poaching. Assam CM Sarbananda Sonowal had recently met Nagaland CM TR Zeliang and sought his help in tacking the menace of rhino poaching.
It is important to rope in neighbouring States of Assam like Nagaland and Manipur as most of the rhino horns were smuggled out of the state through Nagaland, some of the smuggled horns also finds its way to international black market in South East Asian countries through the Moreh international border in Manipur.