Around a hundred rhinos have been killed in Assam's Kaziranga National Park in the last 5 years.
Highlights
- Assam's one-horned rhinos at constant risk from poachers
- Eleven rhinos killed in Kaziranga National Park this year
- Involvement of forest officials needs to be probed: Assam forest minister
As night falls at Assam's Kaziranga National Park, a dozen men - some forest guards while others part of a special task force - set out on a raid to a village on the periphery of the reserve, home to the biggest numbers of one-horned rhino in the world.
The aim: to catch a suspected poacher living in the village for the last few months. Half-an-hour later, the men reach a village hut. Two of them break open the door. A man is picked up and taken away. 30 minutes later, the bad news comes. This is the wrong guy. The real poacher may have given them the slip.
These are daily challenges at Kaziranga, more so in the last 15 days with the state's new BJP government prioritising action against Kaziranga's poachers, their informants and suppliers, responsible for about 100 rhino killings in the last five years.
Eleven rhinos have been killed just this year, one 10 days ago when Assam's new forest minister was visiting. More shockingly, in April, just hours after the British Royal couple William and Kate's visit, a male rhino was shot dead using AK-47 assault rifles.
Eleven rhinos have been killed just this year.
"Without the involvement of forest officials here it is impossible to carry out poaching. This angle needs to investigated much more," admits Pramila Rani Brahma, Assam's new Forest Minister.
In May this year, there was an unusual arrest in the park: that of three forest guards who had conspired with four poachers, and killed a rhino in November last year. They then cut off its horn - a lucrative commodity worth lakhs in the grey market - and buried the rhino right next to a forest camp.
On Friday, a notorious poacher with links to militant groups in the area was caught. So far this year, 26 poachers have been arrested in Kaziranga.
"It is very difficult to say that we will be able to achieve zero poaching but I am confident that we as a team can reduce it to negligible levels," said Sibashish Das, Divisional Forest Officer at the Kaziranga National Park.
But difficult terrain, combined with sophisticated weapons like assault rifles found with poachers mean that the focus has to be unrelenting.