Killing tigers for genitals a new concern for MP: Panna royals wrote to PM for CBI probe

BHOPAL: Will

Panna tigers

be pushed back to oblivion, again? With five tigers dead in just eight months — including one floating in

Ken river

, beheaded and with its genitals severed — the forest ministry has set up a central team to probe the deaths.

Investigators here are digging out a cold case where a beheaded tiger was found floating in the same river in 2005.

The ministry’s team, comprising senior officers from NTCA,

Wildlife Crime Control Bureau

(

WCCB

) and

wildlife Trust of India

(WTI), will investigate the “circumstances leading to the disturbing developments inside Panna Tiger Reserve”.

It was the death of tiger P123 that put wildlife officials on their toes. Its headless carcass was found floating in Ken near PTR’s Hinauta range on August 9.

After it was pulled ashore, foresters realized its paws and genitals had been severed. It reminded investigators of a similar case 15 years earlier, which remains unsolved.

Panna royal writes to PM for CBI probe into tiger deaths

Bizarre fetishes for eating tigers’ vital organs and using claws and whiskers to “rain money from the sky with black magic” have surfaced as major problems in tiger conservation, say officials.

While the ministry’s team is yet to arrive in Panna, the state tiger strike force (STSF) has submitted a confidential report to the wildlife headquarters. “We have got STSF’s report. Action will be decided on the basis of its findings,” said chief wildlife warden Alok Kumar.

Till autopsy of the eightyear-old P123 found that its sex organs were removed, a section of officials claimed it was killed in a territorial fight. Some of them even delivered a cooked up story that a forest guard had seen P123’s fight with another tiger. They also suggested that crocodiles must have eaten its head.

With autopsy revealing the grisly truth, PTR’s monitoring system has come under question.

R Sreenivasa Murthy, the IFS officer behind successful reintroduction of Panna tigers, is alarmed by the spate of recent deaths.

“This is an extremely serious issue. The culprit seems to me an insider. Unless we nab the culprit and seize missing parts of P123, the future of Panna tigers would be bleak. We lost this reserve once and cannot afford another debacle. If we fail to nail the culprit immediately, I am sure we will be heading towards making Panna a zerotiger again reserve,” he told TOI.

The daughter-in-law of the erstwhile Panna royal family, Yuvrani Jiteshwari Devi, has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding a CBI probe into the death of five tigers. “Locals and forest guards had approached me to raise the issue, as poaching is way beyond control and the lower staff may get suspended,” Jiteshwari Devi told TOI.

This is the second time a CBI probe is being sought. In 2011, Madhya Pradesh high court dismissed a PIL for a central investigation into the disappearance of PTR tigers between 2007 and 2009.

Activist Ajay Dubey, who had written to CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan in October 2011, for a probe into an alleged nexus between a section of PTR officials and poachers, said: “We still want a CBI inquiry. The MP government should fix accountability of officers posted in Panna and in the wildlife wing of MP forest department.”

In 2009, the nation was shocked to know that Panna didn’t have even a single tiger left from 20 three years earlier. From the depths, Panna made a complete turnaround and proved to be a model in tiger reintroduction. Now, the 543 sq km reserve has nearly 50 tigers (including cubs).