While five highly-endangered one-horned rhinos, including a three-year-old calf, have been killed by poachers in and around the 1,000-sq. km national park in central Assam this year, as many as 20 rhinos fell to the guns of poachers, who managed to escape after removing the rhinos’ horns, last year.

"A full-grown male rhino was killed near the highway that runs along the park and its horn extracted and taken away," park authorities said. Incidents of poaching are taking place even after Assam forests minister Rockybul Hussain called an urgent meeting of top-ranking forest and wildlife officials after a female rhino and her calf were killed. The minister also claimed to have intensified security in and around the park.

Park warden S.N. Buragohain, who appeared clueless about the poaching of rhinos in Kaziranaga, said: "We are trying our best to check poaching and have killed several poachers and arrested a number of them in the past few months."

Outraged wildlife activists in Assam have expressed surprise at the failure of state forest officials to check poaching of rhinos. "Our attempts to draw the attention of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi through fax messages have also failed," the wildlife activists said. Some student bodies also joined the protest and sought measure to protect the rhino, which faces extinction.

Several leading wildlife conservation NGOs have again urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi to intervene to save Kaziranga’s rhinos.

"While Kaziranga has been recognised the world over as one of the best-managed national parks, rhino poaching has suddenly increased at an alarming rate," the NGOs said in letters sent to the Prime Minister and the Congress president. The NGOs also asked the Prime Minister to seek an explanation from Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi and state forests minister Rockybul Hussain.

Kaziranga is currently short of over 100 forest guards against a sanctioned strength of 487.

The Assam government had promised 50 armed Home Guard personnel in April last year, but only 20 were provided.

The state government had in April last year announced an "emergency action plan" to check poaching in the national park. It also set up wildlife crime control committees at the district level in Nagaon and Golaghat, the two districts in which Kaziranga falls.