Mumbai: The battle to curb poaching in Maharashtra got a big boost with the arrest of the most wanted tiger skin and wildlife body parts trader, Ranjitsingh Bawaria, on Sunday in Golukonda village in Vijaynagram district of Andhra Pradesh (AP).
The arrest was made by Maharashtra forest department officials from Melghat, working with AP police.
“This is a big success for the Government of Maharashtra, which has demonstrated that if authorities consistently pursue [cases], every poacher can be nabbed,” Kishor Rithe, member of Maharashtra State Board for Wildlife and President of Satpuda Foundation, told Gulf News from Nagpur.
Two others have also been arrested for their involvement in poaching.
Ranjitsingh is a close associate of one of India’s deadliest poachers, Sansar Chand, who is now in Tihar Jail for killing nearly 200 tigers and thousands of other animals. Chand is said to run the entire poaching and trading network through Ranjitsingh and others.
It is suspected that he purchased tiger skin from six offenders who were arrested by Melghat Tiger Reserve (MTR) authorities in March 2013.
Ranjitsingh is wanted in Maharashtra for killing a tiger at Dhakna in MTR early this year, which led to the reserve’s forest rangers investigating the case for some time.
The arrested poacheer, from Hoshiarpur, Punjab, is also wanted in Chandrapur for allegedly poaching two tigers in 2009.
He was nabbed on the basis of call detail records by a team led by assistant conservator of forest Vishal Mali and others from Melghat. Mali is also in charge of cyber cell operations in the Amravati Circle.
