Poachers who gunned down forest guard in Dhenkanal arrested | Bhubaneswar News
Bhubaneswar: A day after four poachers shot dead a forest guard in Rajmohanpur forest under Hindol range in Dhenkanal district, police and forest officials on Sunday arrested all the accused.A country-made gun was seized from the arrested poachers.The accused were identified as Sibaram Pradhan (50), Laxmidhar Aruk (50), Sunil Kumar Jena (21), and Purnachandra Dehury (38). The four were remanded in judicial custody after their bail pleas were rejected by a court. “There was strong local intelligence about the movement of poachers, which led to their arrest,” Sumit Kar, divisional forest officer, Dhenkanal, said.“Forest guard Prahlad Pradhan succumbed to bullet injuries after one of the poachers fired from almost point-blank range,” said Kar. “The four were hiding in a hut they used for resting and plan hunting when the eight-member patrolling squad barged in. As Pradhan was leading the squad, he alone entered the hut while the other members waited outside. It was pitch dark, and there was an altercation between the poachers and Pradhan,” he said.Forest officials said Pradhan succumbed to injuries on the way to hospital. His lower abdomen was hit by the bullet, rupturing vital organs.Kar said it is yet to be ascertained if the bullet injury was due to a shot fired from Pradhan’s gun or that of the poachers. “Post-mortem will reveal which gun the bullet was fired from, although prima facie it looks like it was fired from a country-made gun. Pradhan was using a pump-action gun,” the DFO added.Forest officials said the murder of Pradhan was a result of long-simmering anger against the forest department due to heightened anti-poaching activities in the past three years. They said Narasinghpur range in Athagarh forest division and Hindol in Dhenkanal are poachers’ dens as the forests are contiguous. The forest ranges have recorded frequent elephant killings.Meat of wild boar and barking deer is in high demand, and poachers hunt them to sell the meat. “In the past five months, 12 wildlife cases have been registered in Hindol range alone and 20 poachers arrested. This has led poachers to bear a grudge against forest personnel. We have also seized four country-made guns in five months,” a senior forest officer said.
