Big cats, a leader, a cop and a hunting tribe.
Wildlife protection like art requires royal patronage, and the political will. The Asiatic lions survived in the Gir forest because the Junagarh royalties protected them. Some fifty years ago, it was Indira Gandhi who started Project Tiger and saved the Royal Bengal Tigers from the brink of extinction. The poaching has continued, and continues to pose an existential threat to tigers. Last week, the political will was demonstrated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he launched the International Big Cats Alliance to end poaching and illegal wildlife trade.
He tweeted a video and some images of himself dressed as a wildlife researcher with a telescopic lens camera roaming the jungles of Bandipur and Mudumalai reserves for a glimpse of a tiger in the wild. This was in vain. Many commentators ridiculed this whole act as mere posturing. To me it is big news: that a tiger sighting was not orchestrated for the prime minister, as has always been the case in the past, when baits were placed, even drummers were engaged to force tigers out of their hiding.
Last year, on his birthday eight Cheetahs arrived from Namibia. They would be the first few to roam India's jungles after 1952 when they were officially declared extinct. After a month of quarantine, they were released in Kuno National Park. They are the world's fastest land animals, and that's the pace at which Project Cheetah, launched under Modi's leadership is working. Now there are a dozen of them. The 'African Cheetah Introduction Project in India' was conceived in 2009. It needed the political will to be executed.
I'm reminded of fifteen years back when I covered the lion poaching case in Gir National Park (GNP) of Gujarat. He, as the chief minister of Gujarat, had shown zero tolerance for poachers of the big cat.
This was in March 2007, 10 lions were killed by poachers in three different incidents at the GNP. This was for the first time the organised poaching network had targeted lions, Belinda Wright of the WPSI had informed. Perhaps, there weren’t enough tigers left in the wild, and lions, who are not particularly shy to human presence, making them sitting ducks for the poachers.
The poachers of the Katni gang consist of hunting tribes, the Bahilyas, in this particular case, travel far and wide for poaching operations by illegal wildlife traders in Delhi and the Fatehpur-Kanpur belt. They broke from the past, crossed the Madhya Pradesh border, and entered Gujarat, lions were the target and had the potential of wiping out the only Asiatic lion population in the world.
I lived with the poachers of the Katni gang to do a story Tracking the tiger killers for India Today (https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/20100607-tracking-the-tiger-killers-743050-2010-05-27). These hunting tribes are part of the gang, Pardhis and Bahilyas in particular, are known to be ruthless, skin a tiger like peeling an orange, are into a host of wildlife crimes like killing leopards, bears and elephants for ivory, carry out organised theft of railways and telecom properties, also into sandalwood smuggling. They are known to carry out contractual murders as well.
These poor jungle people who have coexisted amicably with the wild in the forest for generations are hired by poachers and notorious traders like the infamous Sansar Chand, who recently died, and Shabeer Hassan Qureshi and their families. These two families are together responsible for 1,000 tiger deaths, now their extended families are doing the same. A few days ago police arrested Akash Chand son of Sansar Chand.
Back in 2007, the then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, trekked the forest of GNP for three hours to reach the site of the lion killings–where the denuded lion carcass lay rotting. Poaching was the motive–there was no doubt about it.
Not just for their furry skin, other body parts of the big cats are sold for premium as believed to have potent medicinal properties, whether it’s whiskers, penis, claws, teeth, gallbladder, and whatnot!
Appalled, Modi took the investigation from the Forest Department and handed it over to the CID-crime under Inspector General of Police (IGP) Keshav Kumar. He was assigned a seven-member team along with a mobile forensic lab to nab the poachers. It was a blind date with the crime as there was “no seizure, no eyewitnesses," recounts Kumar. Forensics was the only ray of hope.
Delhi-based NGO, Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), which specialises in anti-poaching operations, provided Keshav with crucial input about the modus operandi of the Baheliyas. The Baheliyas were apprehended from the vicinity of the GNP where they were camping but linking them to the crime was difficult. And they are good actors, feigned ignorance, and no recovery of lion parts was made. Here forensic support came in handy.
It was a matter of time, before Keshav’s team recovered lion carcasses, with bones and claws missing, from digging pits near their camping sites. It was established forensically that their nails, spears and animal traps carried traces of flesh, blood and hair of the poached lions. “The DNA fingerprint established who amongst them killed which particular lion,” recalled Keshav when we met in Delhi recently. There was no room for doubt. Thirty of them were convicted and sentenced to three of imprisonment within a year. This was the first wildlife case solved using forensics.
Baheriyas travel with family–women and children, who are couriers of the trophy. They poach tigers with the facility of an artist. They cut a slit open in the skin, peel it off like an orange even before the tiger is dead, and collect other body parts of value, leaving the carcass to rot. They are skinny short people. They supply tiger skin–referred to as chadar–and other tiger parts to people like Sansar Chand who smuggle it across the border and make a fortune. Belinda Wright showcased the market of tiger parts in Lhasa, as are in great demand in ancient Chinese medicine. This was more than a decade ago before the Dalai Lama intervened and discouraged his followers from doing it.
A tiger skin sold provides for half a year of cash needs for the Baheriya family. Poverty makes killing tigers a matter of livelihood and survival. They have existed in the forest amicably with the wild for generations. The incentive to kill tigers should change to protect them along with other flora and fauna. They should be foot soldiers of the wildlife department and not poachers. Keshav and I would discuss, and if this is made possible, Indian jungles will become impregnable for poachers. Tribals should be part of tiger conservation. And making that transition also requires a political will. Prime Minister has the ability to do that.
The lion poaching case changed Keshav’s life. He since has held many senior positions, worked in CBI, and retired as the director general of police. And now calls himself a “forensic warrior” and devoted his life to training police personnel and law enforcement agencies for better and greater use of forensic science and improving the overall standard of criminal investigations. To him, forensics is an “adventure created by creative appetite, mission, passion to nab the culprit.”
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