: Three months after a tigress was declared a ‘man-eater’ and killed in Uttarakhand’s Ramnagar area, the Uttarakhand High Court on Monday ordered that no wild animals in the State, including tigers, leopards, and panthers, should be killed or declared ‘man-eater’.
“No wild animals including tigers, leopards and panthers shall be declared man-eater or rogue and killed in entire State of Uttarakhand,” the Division Bench comprising Justice Alok Singh and Justice Rajiv Sharma stated.
The Court further ordered that the wild animals who posed a threat to human life must be “captured alive by using a tranquilliser gun in the presence of a veterinary doctor. The captured animal shall be thereafter released in the nearby forest or kept in a zoo temporarily and thereafter released in its own habitat”.
Since most of the killings of man-eating leopards and tigers are done by the State forest department, which hires professional hunters for the task, the High Court stated that no private hunters could now be hired by the State government.
Also, after several instances where elephants have been killed due to electrocution, the HC directed the Railway Ministry to “dig up trenches around the electric poles along the railway track in Rajaji National Park, and also to insulate the electric poles by raising a fence to avoid electrocution.”
