A team of Madhya Pradesh forest department has caught a poacher with four leopard paws in Seoni district, which were likely to be used in some tantric ritual.
Acting on a tip-off, district forest officer (south) Tomar Singh Sulia said they caught NamdeoParikar while he was travelling from Balaghat to Seoni in a bus on Thursday.
“Our team intercepted the bus between Seoni and Barghat and recovered four leopard paws from Namdeo, a resident of Seoni. During questioning, he revealed that the leopard paws were handed over to him by Hem Singh Kawri in Balaghat. He also told us that he had met this Kawri in Balaghat,” he said.
Sulia said Balaghat and Seoni forest officials jointly conducted a search operation in Balaghat to trace Kawri, but he has probably escaped.
“We will continue our search to trace Kawri to get further leads in this case. We have to find whether this is part of some poaching network. These paws (leopard claws) are generally were by some locals in some tantric rituals”, he said. Sulia said Namdeo was produced before the court on Friday.
Seoni-based wildlife conservationist Imran Khan said both tiger and leopard claws were used by some locals for tantric rituals to get wealthy and feel powerful.
“Some people also wear claws as there is this notion that wearing them increases power in a person,” he said.
The Indian leopard (Pantherapardusfusca) is a leopard subspecies widely distributed in the subcontinent and has been classified as Near Threatened by IUCN since 2008.
Apart from becoming victims of poaching, retaliatory killing and conflicts with farmers, leopards are also getting killed in the road hits in MP. Shrinking and fragmentation of leopard habitat and growing population are leading to a surge in the leopard-man conflict in the state, which in turn increases the chances of retaliatory killings.
