Elephant deaths in C'garh: 3 forest officials, guard suspended

Three Chhattisgarh forest officials and a guard have been suspended in connection with recent deaths of three wild elephants in state, an official said on Sunday.

A show cause tice has also been issued to a divisional forest officer (DFO) in Balrampur district for alleged dereliction of duty, he said.

suspension orders and show cause tice were issued on Saturday evening, a senior forest official told PTI.

As per orders, sub-divisional forest officer (Rajpur) K S Khutia, range forest officer (Rajpur) Anil Singh, deputy ranger (Gopalpur) Rajendra Pras Tiwari, and forest guard Bhupendra Singh have been suspended, he said.

carcass of a female elephant was found on June 11 in Gopalpur circle under Rajpur forest range of Balrampur district, while two elephants, one of m pregnant, were found de in joining Pratppur forest range of Surajpur district on June 9 and 10.

According to officials, all three jumbos belonged to same herd that h moved towards Pratappur from Rajpur.

"As per reports, elephant whose carcass was found on June 11 from Rajpur forest range probably died on June 6.

se forest staff allegedly failed to inform senior officials about it till June 11. y allegedly indulged in serious negligence in duty," official said.

ir act amounts to violation of Rule 3 of Chhattisgarh Civil Services (Conduct) Rules. refore, y have been suspended with immediate effect, he said.

forest department has also issued a show cause tice to Balrampur's DFO Pranay Mishra, seeking his reply within a week, official said.

" DFO is expected to take steps to prevent human- elephant conflicts through various means. But in this case, he did t even have information of elephant's death till carcass got decomposed. This clearly indicates that he has committed gross negligence," said tice.

Because of this, incident was constantly reported in media which has maligned im of state government, it furr said.

tice asked why disciplinary action should t be initiated against Mishra under provisions of All India Services (Discipline and Appeal) Rules, 1969. State Forest Minister Mohamm Akbar on Friday constituted a panel heed by a retired Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer to probe deaths of elephants.

minister said postmortem of pachyderms revealed that one of m died of cardiac arrest, ar of toxicity and third one died due to infection.

Representative im