Four poachers were arrested by a forest official of the Rajiv Gandhi Orang National Park in Udalguri district on Saturday after it came to light that they had allegedly killed a tiger. It is reported that the forest officials recovered the tiger’s skin and bones from the poachers’ possession which they had hidden underneath the ground.
It is alleged that the poachers – Abdul Kashem, Jiabur Rahman, Raful Ahmad and Aijul Islam – are involved in several cases of tiger poaching in Orang National Park. The four of them hails from Data Somali under Dhekiajuli Police Station in Sonitpur district. The forest officials produced the poachers in Tezpur court on Saturday following their arrest. The officials said that few days back, two other poachers have been sent to judicial custody for tiger poaching and with today’s arrest, the count has gone up to six. Earlier this year, the Chief Minister, Sarbananda Sonowal, had provided automatic rifles to Assam’s tiger reserves to curb poaching.
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In 2015, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) gave its nod to declaring 492.46 sq km of Orang National Park as a tiger reserve. Of this, 79.28 sq. km is the core area and the rest the buffer of the reserve.
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