Seven peacocks and eight peahens were found dead on a farm land at Puthumaniyarampatti village near Vaiyampatti in the district on Tuesday. A Forest Department official said the peacocks and peahens had died after reportedly consuming rice mixed with rat poison strewn on the farm land’s boundary.
The Manapparai Forest Range officials arrested the land owner Pichai (80) on Wednesday in connection with the death of the peafowls and booked a case against him under section 9 of The Wild Life (Protection) Act. The official said they received information about the death of the peacocks and peahens following which a team conducted an inquiry.
According to the official, the landowner had strewn rice mixed with rat poison along the boundary of his farm land, where he had raised groundnut, to prevent rodents from damaging the crop. Samples were lifted from the dead birds and would be sent to the forensic laboratories in Tiruchi, Thanjavur and Madurai.
Postmortem was conducted on the dead birds and the carcasses were later buried in a reserve forest, the official added.
