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Sonu Jain
NEW DELHI, Nov 4: After the Salman Khan incident, `blackbucks' for some mean trouble and especially for farmhouse owners in Delhi who kept them as pets. Sleek black bodies roaming in their lawns had become a status symbol. Now eager to escape from the clutches of the law (keeping Schedule I animals in private custody is illegal), they are releasing them into the wild at night.
The forest department yesterday caught two blackbucks in Mandi village in the Southern ridge near Mehrauli. Some locals in the nearby jhuggi jhopri clusters complained to the Mehrauli police station that stray dogs were troubling and injuring them. The forest department rushed to the spot and captured the two blackbucks, one male and the other female.
``Seeing their health, it was very clear that they had been in captivity for a long time and had been left there recently. The ridge area belongs to the forest department and no blackbucks had been spotted in the past,'' said Ishwar Singh, deputy conservator of forest (West).
Inanother incident today, a forest department team led by two inspectors raided another farmhouse in Najafgarh called Chetan belonging to Ganga Saran and captured three blackbucks and two sarus cranes. Two of them were six years old while one was only a year old. The owner of the farmhouse was also arrested and will be presented at the Tis Hazari courts tomorrow.
The department has also got tip-offs from other areas where they feel that the farmhouse owners might have abandoned them. One such area is near the Videsh Sanchar Nigam building in Mehrauli which is thickly wooded. Some farmhouses are also located in the area. Blackbucks along with other animals are reported to have suddenly appeared in that green cluster.
Another incident which sparked off this sudden abandoning is that two balckbucks were seized from eunuchs recently in Sultanpuri. They were arrested and kept in police custody. The guilty were remanded in judicial custody.
Sources in the department say that there as many as 40 blackbucks beingkept as pets in the farmhouses of Delhi. But what is worse that they are being abandoned in panic, risking their safety. This is especially true of those belonging to families from Uttar Pradesh where these animals are found in plenty.
``We have got information from a lot of places but we need confirmation before we raid them. But due action will be taken against them,'' said Singh.
The captured blackbucks were taken to the Society for Prevention of Cruelty against Animals (SPCA) and then later given to the zoo. Even on a holiday, the forest department had sent its team out with one jeep, one gypsy and one truck to follow the blackbuck trail.
Blackbucks though not really dwindling in number are listed as Schedule I animals as they are only found in certain pockets of UP and Rajasthan.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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