Forest officials attacked during anti-encroachment drive in tiger reserve village in Chhattisgarh

TNNRaipur: A forest department team led by the deputy director of Udanti-Sitanadi Tiger Reserve in Chhattisgarh’s Dhamtari district was allegedly attacked and manhandled by villagers during an anti-encroachment operation inside a sensitive forest belt on Monday, exposing rising tensions over a massive illegal forest land encroachment case uncovered through satellite imagery and drone surveys.The incident took place at Jaitpuri village in Sihawa police station limits when officials of the Udanti-Sitanadi sanctuary reached the area to initiate action against alleged encroachers accused of clearing large stretches of protected forest land over the past 15 years.USTR deputy director Varun Jain told TOI that he had gone to the village to arrest a number of accused named in forest offence cases linked to encroachment over nearly 106 hectares inside the core wildlife and Mahanadi catchment area.He said the situation spiralled after villagers gathered in large numbers and allegedly surrounded the forest team. During the confrontation, several officials were pushed, manhandled and assaulted, while uniforms of forest personnel were torn in the chaos. The videos of the incident also surfaced on social media.Forest officials somehow managed to escape from the spot and alerted Sihawa police station, following which additional police personnel were rushed to the area.Jain said the operation was linked to action against 166 alleged encroachers identified during a large-scale forest land investigation. He added that five persons have been arrested so far and the situation was under control.The confrontation comes against the backdrop of a major forest encroachment investigation in the Udanti-Sitanadi landscape, where satellite imagery and drone surveys recently revealed large-scale illegal tree felling and land grabbing inside protected forest areas.Officials estimated that close to one lakh trees were illegally cut during this period to clear land for cultivation.TOI had recently reported that forest density in some affected patches dropped drastically from nearly 1,000 trees per hectare to just 25-50 trees per hectare, indicating extensive clearing activity.Officials said that separate FIRs related to assault on govt servants and obstruction of official duty are likely to be registered in connection with the violence.