Fearsome felines become dazed

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, OCT. 7. It was like the silence of the lambs. The fearsome tigers are so dazed by the murder of one of their own that they are just acting like lambs in being silent which could not have been more eloquent.

While `Karuna', the mother of the killed and skinned one-year-old tiger `Sakhi', continues to be edgy, the other four tigers in the safari enclosure had been refusing food.

A day after the macabre incident, the failure of the Nehru Zoological Park authorities in immediately alerting their higher officials and in filing a complaint with the police is still shrouded in mystery.

While the incident was noticed on Thursday morning, the zoo authorities sat on it till evening before passing on the information to the police and their superiors.

The Chief Minister, Mr. N.Chandrababu Naidu, who along with the Roads and Buildings Minister, Mr. K.Vijayarama Rao, visited the zoo on Saturday, appeared perplexed at this delayed response. It was a lapse on the part of the zoo and the sequence of events raised doubts, he said.

"Why did the authorities here take a full eight hours to inform the Chief Conservator," he wondered. The lapse needed to be investigated thoroughly, he told presspersons, adding in a definitive tone, "the killing of the tiger had the connivance of zoo insiders".

The officials, however, claim that they were too shocked to take any decision. Said a senior official, "Once we discovered the carcass we were too stunned to react." Four staffers -- Messrs Venkatswamy, Viqaruddin, Laxminarayana and Basheer -- were suspended pending an enquiry and the police took away 11 persons for questioning.

Police teams which continued to look for some tell-tale signs indicated that no trace was left pointing to the expertise that went into the crime. "We could not lift any fingerprints," said a member of the investigating team.

A team of the CID sleuths also arrived at the zoo and started quizzing the staffers on Saturday. They were seen enquiring about the possibility of the use of the tranquiliser on `Sakhi' before killing it. These guns were expensive and not easily available.

Interestingly, apart from the Forest department, it was only the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad (MCH) which possessed them as they were using it for the killing of mad and stray dogs. Though the report of postmortem conducted on the slain tiger by the Veterinary Biological Research Institute was not yet ready, zoo staffers rule out the use of the tranquiliser. "The killers had apparently asphyxiated the feline and then slit its throat to kill it," an official said.

A point is the near-absence of security personnel to guard the zoo. Spread over 400 acres in total and 100 acres for the four safaris earmarked for tiger, lion, bear and bison -- the park is severely understaffed.

Against a sanctioned staff of 320, it has only 240 persons on its rolls. "Is it humanely possible to monitor each and every corner of the zoo with such a number," asked one official.

Incidentally, it was only last year the same time that one of the tigers had mauled a boy who climbed down the fence. Following a furore, electrified fencing of the zoo was mooted. Apparently, it has been kept in the limbo with funds not forthcoming. In a way, the killing was just waiting to happen.

Meanwhile, employees of the zoo had threatened to go on an indefinite strike if the suspension orders on four staff members were not revoked and those taken away by the police were not released by Monday.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Southern States
Previous : 5 killed in mine mishap
Next     : Council of Churches submits memo to President