Aizawl: With winter setting in, poaching has become a commonplace occurrence in Mizoram. Four persons were arrested for killing wild animals in different places last week alone.
Officials of the Bairabi forest range in Kolasib district bordering Assam, while pursuing inputs from local Young Mizo Association (YMA) volunteers, recovered and seized the carcass of barking deer (northern red muntjac, muntiacus vaginalis) on the banks of the river Tlawng near Bairabi village on Friday night. The carcass of the barking deer bore bullet wounds.
The suspects — Prodip Chakma (40), Prodip Poddo Chakma (36) and Geno Prodip Chakma — are residents of Bhaichorra in Assam's Hailakandi district. They claimed that they were daily workers cutting down bamboo in the vicinity of commission of the crime. The mutilated body of the barking deer was buried after soaking it with fuel.
A criminal case was registered against the four suspects. They were produced before a magistrate in Kolasib, who remanded them to judicial custody and sent them to the district jail Saturday.
Earlier on Nov 27, a farmer in Mampui village of southern Mizoram's Lawngtlai district was arrested by the deputy conservator of forest (Chhimtuipui wildlife division) for trapping a wild boar near his jhum hut. The DCF seized smoked meat and three legs of the wild boar and fined the unnamed farmer Rs 20,000 under relevant sections of The Wildlife Protection Act 1972.
State forest officials said winter is the time when animals like wild boar come to Mizoram in search of food from the low-lying areas. This is also the time when tribals go on a hunting spree as their work in the jhum (slash and burn way of shifting cultivation) is completed.