There is a coming down of foreign tourists in the Betla National Park now after a 2 and a half years of self imposed stoppage to it in the wake of the Covid pandemic globally.
Forester Umesh Dubey said we have tourists from Belgium, United Kingdom and France at Betla. He said the Betla National Park officials are taking all possible care of these foreigners.
Sources said the conspicuous absence of the tiger in the tiger reserve Palamu is being viewed by the tourists as something unusual and painful.
Sources said the foreigner tourists are now told of the presence of around 9 or 10 leopards alone in the Betla National Park.
Regional chief conservator of forests Palamu Kumar Ashutosh said, "Everyone now talks about leopard and its 4 killings, one in our North division and 3 in Garhwa district. We believe any description of leopards should be careful and restrained with no fanciful fear of the leopard so as not to cause any sense of insecurity or panic among our tourists indigenous or foreigners that leopards are around to pounce upon."
Officer in charge of the nearest police station Barwadih under which falls the Betla National Park Srinivas Singh said "Police do keep a track of our foreign tourists. The hotel where they check in/check out, immediately informs us about their names and the country or countries they come from."
"The hotels then forward us their xeroxed copies of the passports and visas which we on scrutiny send to the SP office and DC office for the needful." said the police officer Singh.
On being asked if the foreigner tourists have ever posed any problem or complaint about any kind of harassment to which Srinivas Singh said "The PTR and the police are very vigilant on this (point). No such tourist has ever told us anything adverse coming to him."
"This Saturday February 4 we went to meet these Belgium, UK and French tourists but they had pushed off to the old Palamu Quila and so we would be meeting them tonight positively" said the Barwadih police station OC.
Sources reminded there was a time when Betla National Park had tigress of the name Begum, Rani and tourists loved to sight them.
Begum was found dead in her den, suspected to be poisoned in the late eighties while Rani just disappeared and no one had any clue as to where she went or what happened to her.
Betla National Park saw one more mysterious death of a tigress during the period when Y K Das was the chief conservator of forest and field director PTR.
The Betla canteen has even today a board where the name of the tourist and place that he /she comes from is written if the tourist claims to sight the tiger but unfortunately this board is empty of any such claim to sight tiger over the past two years or so.
There are some hardcore critics to this Palamu tiger reserve who want this to be rechristened as PLR (Palamu leopard reserve) instead of the PTR for having no trace, pug marks, kills etc of the tigers here for months and years here.