Forest dept officials suspended at MP's Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve after photo of burning carcass goes viral: Report

They concealed the death of the tusker for a month and burnt the carcass and only when a photo of the burning body went viral, an activist lodged a complaint and investigations were conducted.

A Range Officer and two Forest Guards at Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve have been suspended for illegally disposing off the carcass of a dead elephant, according to a report in The Indian Express.

They concealed the death of the tusker for a month and burnt the body of the animal and only when a photo of the burning body went viral, an activist lodged a complaint and investigations were conducted.

The Indian Express article notes that according to an investigation report filed by former state Tiger Strike Force chief Dheeraj Singh Chauhan in May 2023, the first person to find the carcass was a local resident. It was found at the Panpatha Range and was already in a decomposed state on November 24, 2022.

The first Forest official to get the information was Forest Guard Kamla Prasad Kol, who was the Range Assistant in charge. Kol informed Panpatha Buffer Range Officer Shil Sindhu Shrivastava about the incident, after which Shrivastava told Kol to “leave the elephant carcass as it was”. Shrivastava did not inform any other senior officers about the same, the report said.

About a month later, Kol told Shrivastava that the “elephant carcass had mostly decomposed, leaving only the skin and bones”, which is when Shrivastava instructed the former to burn the body in the same spot.

However, one of the workers who helped Kamla Prasad Kol burn the body took a picture of the burning carcass on his phone, which later went viral. Wildlife activist Ajay Dubey used this photo to file a complaint. Dubey alleged that due to “criminal negligence, there was a lack of patrolling due to which elephants were hunted and evidence was burnt”.

After multiple rounds of investigation, a chargesheet was filed and Shrivastava and two Forest Guards Kamla Prasad Kol and Pushpendranath Mishra were suspended on July 12.

Activist Dubey told The Indian Express that the “slow investigation” had meant there was a “lack of clarity on how this elephant died”, and raised doubts about whether it was poached.