The department has now found a way out. Impose Section 144 before getting into the act.
Leave the big cats to us, do not crowd around. The Maharashtra forest department's message is understandable. For long, whenever its officials rescue a leopard or a tiger, their biggest nightmare has been the milling crowd that turns it into a public spectacle. The greatest risk here is the mob stoning the already frightened animal and a stampede if the big cat tries to escape.
The department has now found a way out. Impose Section 144 before getting into the act. This Section of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), 1973, empowers officials to prohibit the assembly of over four people in an area.
The idea came up at a meeting of the state tiger cell, held in Nagpur early this month, after nine years. The cell, headed by director-general of police Satish Mathur, has decided to give sub-divisional police officers the powers to impose prohibitory orders. "When animals enter a village or a human habitation, forest staff try to trap it and hundreds of people turn up. The police surely help but do not impose Section 144. We were told that they have powers to impose this Section in specific situations (like these). That is a major outcome," said a senior forest department official.
"If the mob is kept away, the operation can be carried out smoothly. In such situations, at times, around 3,000-4,000 people throng the place. Many times, when the animals are released, people get scared and this leads to a stampede,"said a forest official. The greatest rise Another risk in such a scenario is the mob turning aggressive and hurting the animal, he said.
Mathur told dna that, here on, the police would give the forest department a sanitised area when dealing with wild animals in human habitations.
"This is a recapitulation of SOPs (standard operating procedures)," he said. Girish Vashisht, divisional forest officer (DFO) and spokesperson of the forest department's wildlife wing, said that the tiger cell meeting also created awareness in the police department about wildlife crimes.
Forest department want cops to help trace wildlife traffickers
The forest department has requested the police to help trace around 90 offenders in 16 cases of wildlife crimes. These include poachers and wildlife traffickers who are either absconding, jumped bail or fled from custody, like the notorious tiger poacher Rahul Gulabsingh Gondthakur alias Kuttu, who escaped from the custody of the Bhandara police in January this year.
The forest department had also sought that the accused in wildlife cases be presented before the court through video-conferencing. Maharashtra has six national parks, 47 wildlife sanctuaries and four conservation reserves. The tiger census, results for which were released in 2014, has shown that India has 2,226 tigers and Maharashtra 190.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
 "tiger")
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}