Husband-wife duo held for tiger death in Sunderbans

KOLKATA: Two prime accused in the unnatural death of a tiger in the buffer forest of the Sunderbans on April 8 were arrested on Wednesday. The accused had been avoiding police net for a month.


Foresters claimed that it was a breakthrough in the investigation. A senior forester and four of his colleagues had been severely beaten up by some villagers during the probe.

“Main accused Bimal Das and his wife Anita Das, both residents of Madhya Gurguria village, were arrested on Wednesday from Narendrapur, where Bimal’s in-laws’ place is located. They were sent to judicial

custody

after their production in a Baruipur court,” said GR Santhosha, DFO of South 24 Parganas division, who was beaten up by the villagers on the night of April 20, when he, along with his colleagues, had gone to Bhasha Gurguria village in connection with the investigation.

Sources said Anita had initially misled the forest department during its probe and gone underground with his husband on the night of April 8. She has confessed that she, along with her husband and three other villagers, Mangal Manna, his wife Rukmini Manna and their elder son Prafulla Manna, had even seen the tiger caught in the wire snare. “The tiger was still alive at that time,” said a senior forest official. Mangal and his wife have reportedly fled to south India, where their son Prfaulla is now working. Prafulla was among the villagers who had laid the trap.

The fresh arrests take the total number of arrests in the case to five. Earlier on April 11, Prabodh Manna and Sadananda Halder were held from Purba Gurguria, while on April 20, Ashok Mondal, who had laid the traps, was arrested from Bhasha Gurguria.

The adult tiger was killed after being trapped in a wire snare, made of galvanised iron, in the forests of Ajmalmari I. Sources had revealed that bones and skull of a deer were also found from the spot. The incident laid bare the presence of a poaching racket that usually targets wild boar and spotted deer, both protected under country’s

wildlife

protection act.