After a decade-long trial, six poachers were convicted recently, for shooting a tiger and skinning it way back in January 2002. They were arrested from Bahoriband range of Katni forest division, near Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, in Madhya Pradesh. The accused have been sentenced to three years imprisonment and slapped a fine of Rs10,000 each. On request by the prosecution, the court directed the fine amount of Rs60,000 to be given to the forest department as compensation for its use in forest protection.
According to Nitin Desai, Director, Central India, Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), who had been closely following the investigations, the kingpin/ principal accused in the incident Raja Singh along with five other co-accused belong to the local village of Bahoribandh. The area from where they were arrested is in the corridor area connecting Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve about 60kms-70 km. Katni is a notorious hub of tiger poaching.
According to the sources, the credit for taking the case to this level, was Manjula Srivastava, prosecutor of forest department in this case. They informed that there were certain specific problems in putting together the evidence against the poachers. Major stumbling block in this regard was the death of the vet doctor who had written the post mortem report of the tiger. He passed away in the midst of the trial but Srivastava went ahead taking the help of handwriting experts to establish the authenticity of his report.
“Convictions in tiger poaching cases are very rare . This case is an example of one of the best application of CrPC and Evidence Act in the trials of wildlife cases-thanks to the exemplary efforts of Manjula Srivastava”, said Desai. Meanwhile, India and US in their proposed Wildlife Conservation Cooperation Programme will work jointly on developing further capacities on forensic programmes to combat wildlife crimes. Training programmes would also be organised for collection and building evidence to improve conviction rates of wildlife crimes.