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Pic of slain tiger with its hunters shocks MP

Rahul Singh in Bhopal

A photograph of a slain tiger with its hunters smiling victoriously into the camera has shaken the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department. Among the hunters in the photograph are two employees of the Forest Department, one police officer and two grandsons of a local landlord, on whose farmhouse the picture was taken.

While the police officer is absconding and the forest department is trying to identify its two employees in the photograph, process has been initiated to arrest one of the two boys. The other died recently in a road accident.

The protected animal was hunted inside the Bandhavgarh National Park, reputed to have the highest density of tiger population in the world.

The photograph, which was provided to the media by the World Wildlife Fund, shows seven gun-toting hunters and a hunting dog posing with the carcass.

An embarrassed state government has ordered an inquiry by the Criminal Investigation Department. The Forest Department on its part has rushed a team to Bandhavgarh after initially claiming that it was "a very old picture."

Environmentalists say the photograph proves that hunters are on the prowl once again in Madhya Pradesh.

A tiger-cub was found killed inside the national park early this month. Forest authorities claimed it was a case of cannibalism. WWF, however, suspects foul play.

Last December, the Umaria police recovered a 10.6-ft long tiger skin from a poacher near Bandhavgarh. Some suspect that the skin could be that of tigress Sita, declared missing since last year.

The wildlife authorities, however, deny this. They say Sita, one of the most photographed wild cats in the world who had also made it to the cover of National Geographic, had probably died a natural death.

In mid-February another tiger - Charger - was found badly injured. He had a deep gash in his head and another injury near the tail.

Forest Department believes Charger was injured in a fight with a younger tiger. But not everyone believes this.

The four poachers arrested in December reportedly told the police that they had killed seven to eight tigers in the Park area over the last two years.

Among those who are prepared to believe this is a former minister and Congress MLA Pushpraj Singh, a scion of the Rewa princely family, famous for rearing the world's first white tiger in captivity. He had alleged last year that at least three big cats, including Sita, had fallen prey to poachers in the Bandhavgarh National Park.

Wildlife authorities in Bhopal had denied these charges.

Those involved in tiger protection says poachers have become so brazen they approach even casual tourists to sell tiger and leopard skins.

Most of the poachers are Baheliyas, a local community traditionally engaged in hunting. They kill animals by poisoning their food or laying traps. Tiger skins fetch over Rs 25 lakh a piece overseas, particularly China and South Korea.

With 30 per cent of India's and 20 per cent of the world's tiger population concentrated in Madhya Pradesh, the recent developments have caused concern internationally.

The Environmental Investigation Agency, a UK-based non-government organisation, concluded in it's report last year that the "the trade in tiger and other wildlife is more organised than ever before, with established dealer networks linking the forests of Madhya Pradesh to Delhi and Mumbai and the rest of the world."

The report also quoted a former chief of Madhya Pradesh Tiger Cell as saying that on an average poachers kill one tiger every week and one leopard every day in the state.

Undercover wildlife agents had filed an equally alarming report for Traffic India, an arm of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, in 1994, identifying scores of poachers and skin traders in the state and describing Bandhavgarh as the "worst hit."

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