Karnataka poacher shooting row: Retired forest officers back staff, seek fair probe

In the wake of the shooting deaths of three suspected poachers in the Hanur region of the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary in Karnataka on August 15, the State Retired Forest Officers Association has written to Chief Minister D K Shivakumar to prevent portrayal of forest officers as ‘criminals’ when they act in the line of duty.

“The government should take a clear stance to prevent forest personnel from being portrayed as criminals until the investigation is complete,” D A Venkatesh, President of the Association, said on Friday following a show of support for forest staff at the Freedom Park in Bengaluru.

An impartial probe of the incident should be held “to determine whether the staff’s actions were in good faith, in the performance of their lawful duties, for the protection of the state forest and wildlife Sanctuary,” the Association has said in its letter.

Three persons – Anthony Swamy, 50, John Rose Peter, 43, and Sebastian David Kumar, 35, residents of three villages on the fringes of the Hanur forest – were allegedly shot dead in the wee hours of August 15 by forest officials after identifying them as poachers.

A fourth suspect, Joseph Mahima Das alias Benjamin, 45, from another village, who was among the group of alleged poachers, managed to escape from the encounter site.

The police complaint says the four men were sleeping in the forest – after venturing “to find lost cattle” – when the forest staff chanced on them and opened fire indiscriminately. A probe by the CID unit of the Karnataka Police has been ordered in the case by the state.

The Hanur forest of the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary in the Chamarajanagar district is a very remote area with hills and dense forests bordering Tamil Nadu, and “patrolling such areas day and night, preventing wildlife crime, detecting poachers, confronting people with illegal weapons, and preventing illegal activities are extremely challenging and dangerous duties for frontline forest personnel,” the Association has stated in its letter to the CM.

“There is pitch darkness at night, and nothing can be seen near lakes and rocks. The incident that occurred on August 15 happened in such circumstances. The suspects fired, and forest staff retaliated. There was no malicious intent. There has been no incident in the history of the forest department where people were killed in cold blood,” Venkatesh said.

Forest rangers risk their lives on many occasions, and the state must “stand behind them” since the criminalisation of forest staff “will have an impact on wildlife conservation,” he added.

“In the future, officers/staff will hesitate to perform their work effectively which will have a negative impact on the government,” the Association has stated in its letter while calling for modern safety devices like body cameras, better weapons, bullet-proof jackets, helmets, night-vision Goggles, GPS systems, drones, modern wireless sets and medical kits.

On August 25, the Karnataka Police ordered a CID probe into the August 15 shooting of the three alleged poachers.

The order for the CID probe into the Hanur forest firing deaths was issued after post-mortem reports contradicted forest department claims on the distance of firing.

According to the post-mortem report from the Mysore Medical College and Research Institute, Sebastian David Kumar had two shotgun bullet entry wounds on his body, unlike the others who had single bullet wounds. A shot fired to the left side of his chest reveals “burning/scorching” and “singeing” of chest hair, which is indicative of a very close-range gunshot.

A second gunshot wound on Sebastian David Kumar is on the right thigh, with “burning/scorching present and charring, singeing, and soot deposition found within and around the wound margins,” says the post-mortem report.

While John Rose Peter has a single fatal shotgun wound on his neck above his collarbone, Anthony Swamy has a fatal wound on the right side of his lower rib cage from close range, as per the forensic report.

On August 17, Karnataka Forest Minister Ramalinga Reddy said that “at the time of the incident, the hunters were at a higher point than the department staff at the Karadikalu rocks. Since the hunters were not visible to the department staff, they were shot in the upper part of the waist when the staff retaliated. The staff did not act with any malicious intent.”

The forest department has stated that the firing incident was the culmination of a night-long search to find poachers based on “actionable intelligence” of poachers entering the forest from nearby villages at around 8 pm on August 14.

“We were conducting searches and when we chanced upon the persons who had come with the intent of poaching, both groups became alert. They fired, and we fired,” Hanur Assistant Conservator of Forests (ACF) Mariswamy said.