Atram complaint has forest officials scurrying for cover

After the allegations of manhandling levelled by former minister of state for transport and tribal development Dharmarao Atram, the investigation officer in the chinkara poaching case, sub divisional forest officer HG Dhumal, has come under tremendous pressure.
Atram has lodged a complaint against Dhumal under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, against Dhumal and his subordinate officer Anil Landge at the Azad Maidan police station. According to information, Atram’s complaint has forced the duo to go into hiding.

In his complaint, Atram has alleged that he was manhandled by the forest officials in the high court premises on Friday last week. However, chief conservator of forests, Pune, Shirish Asthana in his report submitted to the principal chief conservator of forest, Wildlife, B Majumdar, has said that Dhumal and his team immediately left the court premises after the decision to brief the additional chief secretary about the development in the case.

Meanwhile, Debi Goenka of Conservation Action Trust said, “This is the most callous attitude of the forest department. On the contrary, the forest ministry should have come forward to protect the officer.”

According to Goenka, the government should appoint a high-level committee to investigate the allegations levelled by Atram. “There are possibilities that Dhumal would be transferred from his current assignment to weaken the case and this will set an example how honest officers should not work,” Goenka said.

He further said that it is difficult to understand that a government official would do such a thing to a political leader in the court premises.

According to a senior forest department official, if the ministry fails to protect its officers, it would set a bad precedent and honest officers would try to avoid such actions in future.

Reacting to the issue, state forest minister Babanrao Pachpute said, “I will not like to discuss the issue. Efforts to safeguard Dhumal and other officials are on.”

According to the eye-witness account of Atram’s associates, they killed more than one chinkara and two hares on June 14. Moreover, they even killed a barking deer on June 16. The investigators had recovered half-burnt remains of the animals and they were sent to Forensic Laboratory at Pune and Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad.

The probe even revealed that Atram himself killed two hares, two chinkaras, two jungle fowls and a barking deer. Forest department sources said that chinkara reports have come positive from both Pune and Hyderabad laboratories, while the sample reports of the hare and barking deer sample are awaited.
a_ashwin@dnaindia.net