Blackbuck deaths: Kanpur zoo guard booked

Five days after 31 blackbucks were 1killed by stray dogs in a zoological park in, a suspended guard along with some unidentified persons were booked under sections of Wildlife Protection Act, Animal Cruelty Protection Act and the Indian Penal Code.

Meanwhile, Minister of State for Zoos has demanded a magisterial probe into the case. The first information report was registered on Friday night against guard Sher Singh, who was suspended after the November 20 incident, and some others by V K Mishra, forest ranger, Kanpur zoo under Section 9/51 of Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, Section 11 of Animal Cruelty Protection Act, 1960 and Section 429 of the Indian Penal Code.

However, Singh was later released on bail. Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Zoos, Shiv Pratap Yadav, who had come for an inspection of the zoo on Friday, demanded a magisterial inquiry into the incident.

V N Garg, UP Principal Secretary (Forest), who had visited the zoo on January 23 to inquire into the tragic death of blackbucks, has submitted a report to Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.

On January 20, thirty-one endangered blackbucks, were found killed by wild dogs in the city zoo. According to their postmortem report, 18 of them had died due to shock, whereas 29 had teeth and claw marks on their bodies.

The following day, the state government suspended zoo Director K Thomas and six others. Blackbucks fall under the ‘near-threatened’ species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.