Park sources informed that a female rhino and its calf were killed by a gang of poachers who also took away the horns, at Bagori range of the national park on Tuesday morning. Forest personnel launched a combing operation in the area to apprehend the poachers but in vain. Forest minister Mrs Brahma visited incident site to take stock of the situation.

She admitted that there was lack of proper infrastructure and sufficient number of forest personnel to man the sprawling rhino abode effectively.

Forest guards recovered another carcass of rhino sans its horn Thursday morning at another place in the same Bagori range prompting some organisations to resort to protest on the highway that passes by the Park against the failure of the Park authority to protect the precious rhinos in the national park.

Forest officials informed that the carcass of the rhino that was recovered this morning was decaying and killed in the flood. They suspected that the horn of the rhino was cut away by some miscreants.

The current wave of flood has already claimed 21 rhinos besides a large number of other animals in the National Park where roads and bridges have been left in shambles by the fury of flood.

The state forest minister Brahma on Thursday chaired a high-level meeting with forest officials to review the wildlife protection scenario in Kaziranga Park and discuss ways to strengthen the Special Task Force (STF) to prevent poaching of rhinos in the state’s wildlife protection areas especially in Kaziranga Park.

Meanwhile, police have arrested a gang of five rhino poachers from Jakhalabandha area near Kaziranga Park and recovered a sophisticated M-16 rifle and other equipment from them. The gang confessed that the M-16 rifle and other sophisticated weapons are provided to them by their accomplices based in Dimapur in Nagaland.