'Olympians, national-level shooters may be involved in poaching cases'

BAREILLY: Following the arrest of international golfer Jyoti Randhawa in Dudhwa tiger reserve (DTR) on poaching charges, DTR officials are now approaching enforcement agencies with request to probe an emerging pattern of shooters linked to poaching cases. Dudhwa field director Ramesh Pandey, who was earlier with Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, has identified a few cases where national and international level shooters were involved in wildlife crimes. Notably, Randhawa is also an amateur shooter who participated in a few skeet and big bore national events.

“It appears to be an emerging pattern where reputed shooters are involved in wildlife crimes. There is possibility of a larger network whose activities have to be watched closely. There is a need to delineate the network and also take preventive measures. We are approaching enforcement agencies to work on the larger module,” Pandey said.

The field director said, “A few cases that have been reported are of Olympian Mairaj Ahmed Khan allegedly hunting a sambar in Bulandshahr’s Khurja in 2011, his brother and national-level shooter Nazam Ahmad Khan allegedly killing a nilgai in Bulandshahr in 2015 and the arrest of another national-level shooter Prashant Bishnoi in Meerut in 2015 for running a poaching racket.”


Trap shooter Nazam Ahmad Khan was arrested with an aide in Bulandshahr’s Halpura village allegedly for killing a nilgai on April 18, 2015.

In April 2017, as many as 44 guns, many of them foreign-made sophisticated weapons; 50,000 cartridges; hides of blackbuck and leopard; nine skulls of chinkara, blackbuck and barking deer, eight with their antlers intact; two trophies, one each of black buck and sambar; one knife with an ivory handle; 117.5 kg meat said to be of nilgai stacked in a freezer in 45 packets and Rs 1 crore cash were seized from national shooter Prashant Bishnoi’s house in Meerut. On the run, Bishnoi was arrested by Directorate of Revenue Intelligence one month after seizures were made.

In 2014, Olympian trap shooter Gurbir Singh Sandhu, also an Arjuna Awardee and father of four-time Olympian shooter Manavjit Singh Sandhu, was held guilty of poaching under the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972.

Randhawa is also a shooting athlete of big bore and skeet events who turned amateur four years ago. However, he ended up at the bottom of score tallies in most of these events. The golfer was caught in Motipur range of Katarniaghat wildlife sanctuary of Dudhwa tiger reserve with a telescope-mounted .22 rifle fitted with a silencer, 80 cartridges, a range finder, carcass of a junglefowl, hide of a sambhar and other wildlife articles in his SUV. Arrested on poaching charges on Wednesday, he has been sent to 14-day judicial remand. Meanwhile, the postmortem report of the junglefowl has confirmed gunshot injury.