THE JHARKHAND STORY NETWORK
Daltonganj, August 21: The Palamu Tiger Reserve (PTR) has every reason to be overjoyed after unearthing as many as 12 muzzle-loading guns and arresting 13 people accused of acquisition, possession, and use of muzzle-loading guns, which fall under the ambit of the Arms Act.
The seizures are just a tip of the iceberg, as muzzle-loading guns are quite an in-house thing of the people living around the PTR more for crop protection from the wildlife and in aberrations, these are used to harm and hurt wildlife.
A range of the PTR that is the least talked about is the Kutku range, which is infamous for muzzle-loading guns. This range is referred to most in connection with the Mandal dam and Doob Chetra (submergence area) than anything else.
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Questions Over Manufacturing and Supply
However, the crux of the issue lies somewhere else. And it is where are the muzzle-loading guns manufactured? Who are the people involved in it? From where is the material for making a muzzle-loading gun procured?
Sources said the PTR can’t afford to ensure its territory free of these indigenous firearms unless it strikes against those who manufacture and sell them as well.
PTR management will have to sit with local police and with senior police officers to work out a plan to get the muzzle-loading guns flushed out.
It’s a mammoth exercise fraught with equally enormous dangers and risks if a forest guard or any forester in charge goes into the house looking for muzzle-loading guns.
The Jharkhand Story correspondent spoke to a cross-section of people to find out how to contain the menace of muzzle-loading guns in the PTR.
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Suggested Measures to Contain the Menace
Here are some of the findings.
- Local ironsmiths should be identified and they should be taken into confidence without annoying them.
- A social awareness campaign should be launched at the hamlet level where local faces should tell why it’s harmful to possess muzzle-loading guns.
- Poachers are scared of using sound-making guns in the jungles as it is heard even quite far off, and so the preference is to noose and not the nozzle of the gun.
- PTR should raise its own fleet of moles (insiders) for keeping a track of what is going on in regard to wildlife.
- Festival time like Holi and acute summer, portends no good for the wildlife. The wildlife gets more vulnerable to poaching.
