The Last Of The Breed

PRERNA BINDRA
Corbett National Park

THE VILLAGERS found him cowering under the grasses, wet, bedraggled, starving, terrified, quite unlike the title bestowed on it — the King of Beasts. This tiny tiger cub, no more than three months old, was found near the Chunakhan centre on the northern fringe border of the Corbett Tiger Reserve, and handed over to the forest department. They tried to find its mother, but it was raining too hard, and any clues that the earth might have carried of the tigress were washed off. They gave up, then, and the cub was sent to the Nainital Zoo.

It was just as well they did. Chances are that the mother would never have been located. Chances are that the mother is now a bag of bundle of bones, stashed in a plastic bag — seized by the police quite by chance in Bilaspur on July 20. The haul contained the skulls and two skeletons of India’s national animal — the Royal Bengal tiger. One of them was a fresh one and weighed about 12 kg, indicating that it was a female. When the accused, Pema Gyatso, was interrogated, it was revealed that the bones and the skins had been bought in Haldwani, and the tigress ‘sourced’ in from Bailprao range, where the cub was found.

The skeletons have been sent for a DNA test, and it may confirm whether one of them is the tigress. Nevertheless, whether the skeleton is that of the cub’s mother or not, the fact remains that a tigress was killed very recently on the edge of Corbett National Park. Once thought impregnable, the Corbett Park is now under assault, its tigers vulnerable.

The Bilaspur seizure could be the final chapter of a deadly poaching trail that the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) has uncovered. The trail takes us back to April 29 this year when forest officials caught a poacher, Dariya, in Bijrani range, in the heart of Corbett Park. Dariya is from the village Samankha — a hub of Bawariyas — a traditional hunting tribe. Dariya confessed to entering Corbett Park to poach a tiger. He said that he was dealing with Sansar Chand, India’s most notorious wildlife criminal, and added that since Chand is currently in jail, he was in touch with one of Chand’s men, Narayan, who lives in Delhi. Dariya also revealed the names of two others involved in the trade, Gopa and Bhima.

Then, on July 7, in Gurgaon (Haryana), a joint operation by the Gurgaon police, the WCCB and the Wildlife Protection Society of India struck pay dirt, yielding a macabre haul — tiger skeletons, skulls, fat, claws, whiskers, penises and testicles.

The accused in the Gurgaon seizure was Bhima. Pema the middleman, revealed to the WCCB that he had bought a set of tiger derivatives from Bhima in Haldwani. He was planning to take them to Delhi to be smuggled out of the country via Nepal and Tibet. The contraband was brought to Delhi at the last minute. The WCCB is now working on the last link — the trader who would have smuggled the goods to Nepal.

The most significant discovery made by the smashing of the racket is that the poachers were operating in areas in and around Corbett Park. Rajaji National Park was another possible source, but more so Corbett, simply because the number of tigers there are much higher. The poachers prefer to operate on the edges of the reserves, since protection there is weaker. •

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bindra.prerna@gmail.com