30 November,2023 01:54 PM IST | Gadchiroli | mid-day online correspondent
Representational Pic/File
Two persons were held after tiger skin was seized from them in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district, forest officials said on Thursday, the PTI reported.
Based on a tip-off about the possibility of tiger skin smuggling, teams of Gadchiroli and neighbouring Chhattisgarh forest divisions conducted a joint operation on Wednesday morning.
They seized the tiger skin from the two persons on Ettapalli-Jivangatta road here, said a release issued by Bhamragarh assistant conservator of forests Ashok Pawar.
The two accused, aged 30 and 37 and both residents of Gadchiroli, were taken into custody and booked under relevant provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act, the release said, as per the PTI.
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Meanwhile, in an another incident, a tiger cub was crushed to death by a train on the Chandafort-Gondia rail route in Maharashtra's Chandrapur district on Monday morning, an official said, reported the PTI.
The incident took place near Kitadi-Mindala village in Nagbhid tehsil, the forest department official added.
"The female cub was 3-4 months old. After necessary formalities, it was cremated," said Chief Conservator of Forests Dr Jitendra Ramgaonkar who along with other officials visited the spot following the incident, as per the PTI.
Bandu Dhotre, head of Eco-Pro, an organisation working for the environment and animal welfare, said a survey following the death of three tiger cubs on the rail route at Junona on November 15, 2018 had zeroed in on 19 points where reduction of train speed would be ideal to curb such incidents.
The survey report also suggested underpasses in Mamla, Junona, Sindewahi, Chichapalli, Talodhi, Balapur and Nagbhid in Bramhapuri and Chandrapur forest divisions, he said.
However, no measures mentioned in the survey report have been implemented, Dhotre alleged.
Meanwhile, last week, the forest officials in Maharashtra's Chandrapur have found the body parts of a tiger in the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) during a search operation, but said that whether they belong to the missing tigress Maya, a popular tigress in the area who went missing in August this year, will be known only after analysis, the PTI had earlier reported on Tuesday.
According to the news agency, the forest officials made it clear that the gender of the striped feline whose body parts were recovered is yet to be established, and a sample of bones collected during the operation has been sent for an analysis to the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru.
Their clarification comes in the wake of reports in a section of media as well as social media that the deceased animal was T-12, popularly known as Maya, a dominant tigress in the area.
Maya went missing in August this year.
